Startups that raised big VC money in 2025; What people bought on Instamart

Hello,

Zerodha’s Nikhil Kamath and Future Group’s Kishore Biyani are taking startups to school.

The duo on Monday launched The Foundery—a part school, part accelerator, and part venture studio for early-stage startups.

Selected participants will work alongside The Foundery team and mentors to turn ideas into investment-ready ventures, and will retain up to a 25% equity in the business they help create. Successful ventures will also receive seed funding of up to Rs 4 crore.

Meanwhile, video telematics firm Cautio has acquired Nikhil Kamath-backed deeptech startup BYTES to expand its focus on AI-powered safety solutions for two-wheelers. 

In other news, the rupee is set for a rocky start to 2026. According to Nomura and S&P Global Market Intelligence, the world’s fifth-largest economy could see its currency drop to 92 against the dollar by the end of March.

In fact, the Reserve Bank of India sold a net $11.88 billion in the foreign exchange market in October in an effort to support the rupee’s free fall this year, bulletin data showed.

Lastly, everyone’s talking about Unacademy’s move to cut the ESOP exercise window for its ex-employees, but what implications does that have for the employees, the company, and the sector as a whole? Here’s an in-depth breakdown of the situation. 

In today’s newsletter, we will talk about 

• Startups that raised big VC money in 2025
• What people bought on Instamart
• Fixing India’s broken trucking market

Here’s your trivia for today: Which fast-food chain once created bubblegum-flavoured broccoli to appeal to kids?

In-depth

Startups that raised big VC money in 2025

In 2025, venture capital firms were loading up ammunition, with major players like Accel and Nexus Venture Partners closing new funds. However, the overall funding activity remained subdued during the year, weighed down by a slowdown in growth and late-stage investments. 

Despite a sharp dip in total deal flow, 22 startups raised $100 million or more this year. Quick commerce company Zepto, electric vehicle maker Erisha E Mobility, and newly-listed investment platform Groww are a few of the companies that attracted large capital from VC firms.

Key takeaways:

• This figure, however, is less compared to 2024, when around 35 startups crossed the $100 million mark, boosted by Zepto’s $1.3 billion funding spree. Zepto continued to raise funds this year as well, bagging millions in a series of rounds that saw its valuation touch $7 billion. 
• In April 2024, Australia-based Macquarie Asset Management set up Vertelo, a fleet electrification solutions platform in India. By August, the company pumped in $405 million, marking the third-biggest deal in India’s EV ecosystem.
• As 2025 draws to a close, early-stage activity showed signs of revival, while Series B and later rounds remained muted, according to The CapTable.

Funding Alert

Startup: Sensa Core

Amount: $72M

Round: Undisclosed

Startup: PowerUp Money

Amount: $12M

Round: Series A

Startup: PlasmaGen Biosciences

Amount: Rs 150 Cr

Round: Equity

Insight

What people bought on Instamart

Swiggy Instamart’s 2025 order data, spanning Rs 10 printouts, Rs 4.3 lakh iPhone carts, four milk packets a second, and 400% growth in gold purchases, maps how quick commerce has expanded from groceries into a full-scale retail habit.

Customer favs:

• India’s quick commerce backbone remains stubbornly domestic. Milk moved the fastest. Indians ordered more than four packets per second in 2025—enough volume to fill an estimated 26,000 Olympic-size swimming pools.
• Speed, however, is where the behavioural shift becomes unmistakable. In Lucknow, a packet of instant noodles was delivered in under two minutes—faster than it takes to cook.
• In Mumbai, one user bought gold worth Rs 15.16 lakh over the year, treating quick commerce less like a store and more like an always-open vault.

Startup

Fixing India’s broken trucking market

Hailing from a family that runs its own trucking business, Vidhant Monga had a front-row view of how freight hiring works on the ground. “The process of hiring trucks was completely broken. Transport companies were always trying to find trucks at the ‘right price’. But the orthodox broker networks had created enormous friction,” Monga tells YourStory. 

Determined to bring structure to this chaos, Monga founded Tender Truck in 2020 and now serves as its CEO. The New Delhi-based startup operates as an aggregator platform, enabling logistics companies to hire verified, compliance-checked fleet owners directly, effectively cutting brokers out of the equation. 

News & updates

• Expensive: Gold and silver soared to all-time highs, as escalating geopolitical tensions and bets on further US rate cuts added momentum to the best annual performance in more than four decades. Bullion climbed as much as 1.9% to surpass the previous record of $4,381 an ounce set in October, while silver rallied as much as 3.4%, closing in on $70 an ounce. 
• Deal: Oracle Co-founder Larry Ellison has stepped in to personally guarantee $40.4 billion in Paramount Skydance's latest effort to pry Warner Bros Discovery away from selling its prized Hollywood assets to streaming giant Netflix. 
• Acquisition: Asset manager Janus Henderson agreed to be acquired by investors Trian Fund Management and General Catalyst, who will pay $49 per share in cash, valuing Janus at about $7.4 billion. The deal is expected to close in mid-2026.

Which fast-food chain once created bubblegum-flavoured broccoli to appeal to kids?

Answer: McDonald’s. It was created for Happy Meals around 2014 to make vegetables more appealing to kids, but the bizarre sweet-and-savoury mix confused children, who rejected it, causing the project to shut down. 

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