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Happy New Year! Welcome to the first edition of ETtech Morning Dispatch in 2025. Kabeer Biswas, Dunzo's cofounder & CEO, is in talks to exit his company. This and more in today’s newsletter.
Also in the letter: ■ Edtechs eye recovery ■ B2Bs accelerate with quick commerce ■ Honasa CBO steps down Dunzo’s last standing cofounder Kabeer Biswas is eyeing an exit Kabeer Biswas, CEO, Dunzo Kabeer Biswas, the sole remaining cofounder and the present CEO at Reliance Retail-backed Dunzo has discussed with investors plans to leave the company , according to people familiar with the matter. Driving the news: Since 2023, the Bengaluru-based company has faced difficulties in securing fresh funding to stay afloat in the fiercely competitive quick commerce market. Talks of Biswas exiting the company coincide with the rapid expansion of its well-funded rivals, Zomato's Blinkit, Swiggy's Instamart, and Zepto.
ET reported on Thursday that former Dunzo executives are setting up new ventures in the quick commerce space. Investors’ take: Sources familiar with the development said some investors have not opposed the idea of Biswas leaving the company. However, the final call from Reliance Retail will be key, they added.
Also Read: PhonePe explored investment in Dunzo’s merchant business Recap: The Bengaluru-based company, among the first startups to facilitate hyperlocal deliveries, has raised over $450 million in funding including debt. Its biggest cheque came from Reliance Retail in January 2022 when the Mumbai-headquartered conglomerate ploughed $200 million as part of a $240 million funding round. Since 2023, Dunzo employees have been hit by several rounds of job cuts and salary delays as the startup scaled down operations in a significant manner.
Digilocker outage stalls user onboarding at fintech firms New-age stock brokers are unable to onboard new customers as the government-backed Digilocker service has been disrupted , according to three people in the know. What’s happening: Tech-first broking platforms extensively use Digilocker as a service provider to authenticate their customers at the time of onboarding. Multiple such firms told us that they have not been able to retrieve customer documents through Digilocker thereby getting their customer onboarding to almost come to a standstill.
Big picture: While Digilocker disruption might be addressed in another day or two, industry insiders have pointed out the concentration risk on Digital Public Infrastructure. A founder of a major wealthtech firm said that digital public infrastructure is great for the country, but there is a need to enable multiple service providers to prevent such massive disruptions. Decoding Digilocker: Digilocker is a service run by the IT ministry under directives of the Union government.
The platform is a digital wallet for documents to be stored online. It enables citizens to access these documents anytime without having to carry physical copies with them. Edtechs turn to hybrid models to ace business sustainability test After a period of considerable churn, 2025 may turn out to be a crucial year for the edtech sector as it tries to shrug off the fallout of the Byju’s implosion.
IPO pipeline: Some edtech firms are also looking to tap the public market for funds. Coaching platform PhysicsWallah is in talks with investment banks to launch an initial public offering (IPO) . How its IPO fares could be critical for the entire sector.
Rise in funding: The funding environment showed signs of improvement, though investments in the Indian edtech sector are largely concentrated among a few major players. Funding in edtech nearly tripled to $608 million in 2024 from $207 million in the previous year, as per data from Venture Intelligence. This still remained far below the $2.
1 billion raised in 2022. While executive education startup Eruditus , skilling and workforce development startup Upgrad and PhysicsWallah raised much of the funds last year, there were also smaller deals involving startups like Hyderabad-based Bhanzu and ByteXL . AI factor: Edtech startups are betting big on artificial intelligence (AI).
According to Upgrad cofounder Mayank Kumar, there will likely be an increase in early-stage funding and investors will look for AI-led models that address specific problem statements. Other Top Stories By Our Reporters B2Bs take a page from quick commerce playbook to speed up operations: Having witnessed the boom in quick commerce, B2B companies are now looking to replicate the model to service their partners and clients. Be it myTVS doing it for automotive parts or Roca India for sanitaryware, more B2B companies are expected to jump on the bandwagon.
While the turnaround time may not be 10 minutes, it still spells a huge shift in the way that these companies operate. Honasa Consumer’s CBO Zairus Master steps down: Zairus Master, chief business officer at Honasa Consumer, the parent company of beauty and personal care brand Mamaearth, has stepped down , two people aware of the development told us. Blinkit rolls out 10-minute ambulance service in Gurugram: Zomato-owned quick commerce platform Blinkit has introduced a 10-minute ambulance service , starting in Gurugram, its chief executive Albinder Dhindsa said on Thursday.
Global Picks We Are Reading ■ Nvidia invested $1 billion in AI deals in 2024 ( FT ) ■ How to build a healthier relationship with your screen ( Wired ) ■ AI’s global impact in 2024 — beyond Silicon Valley ( Rest of World ).
