Zomato is sneaky but smart; Making insurance plans affordable

Hello,

Today’s word of the day for Indian banks: due diligence.

Indian lenders, including the State Bank of India, are scrambling to review their exposure to the Adani Group and whether compliance protocols need to be tightened while offering further credit to the conglomerate. 

While they won’t necessarily stop lending to the group, it’s clear that caution is key going forward, at least for now. 

What this saga has highlighted, though, is the growing problem Indian renewable energy developers are facing in finding buyers for the power they produce, especially in the face of the central government’s push away from coal and towards reducing emissions. 

While the supply is growing steadily, is demand keeping step?

Speaking of emissions, one laboratory in China is working towards its goal to fortify one of the most crucial sources of global food security against climate change: potatoes. 

Turns out, it may still be possible to boil em’, mash em’, stick em’ in a stew, even as rising temperatures play havoc in China, the world’s largest producer of potatoes. 

Food security and inflation continue to be a cause for concern for several nations, including India, where prices of bellwether crops like onions, potatoes and tomatoes are set to touch new highs this month.

But necessity is the mother of innovation, after all. Here’s one Swiggy user’s workaround for pricey groceries. 

In today’s newsletter, we will talk about 

• Zomato flexes its ecosystem muscles
• Making insurance plans affordable
• Giving investors exits beyond IPOs

Here’s your trivia for today: Who was the youngest ever Time Person of the Year?

Startup ecosystem

Zomato flexes its ecosystem muscles

Food delivery platform Zomato is riding the buzz around ‘Pushpa 2’ to showcase its unique ecosystem synergies through District, its dining and entertainment bookings app—giving its quick-commerce arm Blinkit an edge that rivals lack. 

Ahead of the film's December 5 release, Zomato's quick commerce arm Blinkit has launched a strategic promotion in select cities and pincodes, offering movie vouchers that can be redeemed for tickets to the Allu Arjun-starrer.

Quick expansion:

• Blinkit's offer includes a Rs 200 voucher on purchases worth Rs 999, encouraging customers to increase their cart value. The push for higher cart values comes as investors closely watch the average order values of quick commerce players.
• Zomato launched District earlier this month after acquiring Paytm's ticketing business. The app works alongside Zomato's dine-out feature, combining dining and entertainment bookings on a single platform.
• “Swiggy integrated BookMyShow recently but due to District, users will see more integration between Blinkit, Zomato and District between events, movies and food and grocery delivery businesses,” says Satish Meena, Founder at Datum Intelligence.

Funding Alert

Startup: Althion

Amount: Rs 3.6 Cr

Round: Pre-Series A

Startup: Homversity

Amount: $1M

Round: Pre-Series A

Startup

Making insurance plans affordable

Bengaluru-based startup InsurMonthly combines health insurance with wellness services under a single subscription model. These services include virtual and physical doctor consultations, prescribed tests, full body checkups, lung health evaluations and discounted pharmacy options.

Coverage for all:

• For SMEs and startups, InsurMonthly provides health and wellness plans tailored to small businesses and startups, enabling them to provide employee benefits without straining working capital. 
• Players like Onsurity and Pazcare have established themselves in the employee benefits and insurance sector. However, InsurMonthly differentiates itself by integrating insurance and wellness services into a single, affordable subscription plan. 
• Currently, the company has over 120 B2B clients, serving more than 40,000 individuals. Some of its clients include Skootr, Lendbox, Suntech Global, and Havi-Design.

Investment

Giving investors exits beyond IPOs

Piyush Gupta, a former managing director at Peak XV Partners, has launched Kenro Capital. The VC firm specialises in growth secondary transactions to provide much-needed liquidity solutions to investors.

Secondary-focused VC firms purchase shares from early-stage VC investors, offering them liquidity to return capital to their Limited Partners (LPs).

Key takeaways:

• “There’s a gap of about $100 billion in the venture capital invested and exits monetised and with the pace of investments growing significantly over the last five years, this gap is only going to grow,” Gupta told YourStory.
• Kenro Capital will invest in companies in India and Southeast Asia, Gupta told YourStory. The VC firm, which has raised an undisclosed amount, will be investing around $20-30 million in growth secondary transactions.
• It will focus on acquiring minority stakes in growth companies that have reached revenue scale, are profitable or close to profitability, and possess other key attributes that position them for a potential public listing within 2-3 years.

News & updates

• Banned: Australia’s social media ban for children under the age of 16 will become law after passing the Senate, the upper house of Parliament, in one of the strictest such restrictions in the world. 
• Case closed: The European Union’s competition regulator formally closed probes into Amazon, Starbucks and Fiat’s European tax cases, bringing an end to three of its attempts to crack down on international companies’ tax deals after court defeats.
• Sweeping probe: The US Federal Trade Commission has opened an antitrust investigation of Microsoft Corp, drilling into everything from the company’s cloud computing and software licensing businesses to cybersecurity offerings and artificial intelligence products.

Who was the youngest ever Time's Person of the Year?

Answer: Greta Thunberg. Selected in 2019 at the age of 16, the magazine lauded her efforts to raise awareness about the looming threat of climate change.

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