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On 11 September 2026, Metropolitan Stock Exchange (MSE) announced that its Electronic Bond Platform (EBP) had processed a tokenised corporate bond for IIFL Finance, under SEBI and RBI's new "Demat 2.0" pilot — launched jointly by SEBI Chairman Tuhin Kanta Pandey and RBI Governor Sanjay Malhotra at the Global Fintech Fest.

If you track MSE's unlisted shares, this read like the breakthrough moment. It isn't — or at least, not on its own. Here's why, and what actually matters instead.

First, what is an EBP — and why does it exist?

When a company wants to raise ₹50–500 crore through bonds, it usually doesn't do a public issue — it places the bonds privately with a handful of institutional investors. Before 2016, this happened over phone calls between the CFO and a few fund managers, with no visibility into who got what price. SEBI's Electronic Book Provider (EBP) framework put this process on a public screen instead: issuers notify the market, investors bid, and the system allots bonds to the lowest-cost bidders first.

Since May 2025, using an EBP is mandatory for any private bond placement of ₹20 crore or more (down from ₹50 crore) — and since well over 90% of India's corporate bond issuance is private placement, this isn't a niche rule. NSE, BSE and MSE have all held this EBP licence since it launched on 1 July 2016.

What Demat 2.0 actually changes

On 10 September 2026, SEBI and RBI launched a regulatory sandbox pilot to test tokenised corporate bonds. Three issuances have gone through so far, totalling ₹1,025 crore:

The bidding process, the ₹20 crore threshold, the ISIN, and the bond's legal character are all unchanged — SEBI has been explicit that tokenisation doesn't create a new asset class or a safer instrument. What changes is what happens after allotment: the bond exists as a digital token on a ledger owned by India's depositories, settlement runs through RBI's wholesale CBDC (e₹), and both legs — cash and securities — settle atomically, on the same day, instead of the usual T+2. Coupons and redemptions can eventually be automated through smart contracts.

Crucially, this back-end upgrade was handed to NSE, BSE and MSE simultaneously. MSE facilitating the IIFL deal is a genuine first — but it's not an exclusive technological edge. Secondary trading and retail access are both still pending, with no date announced, and only 23 investors have participated across all three deals so far.

So why is this MSE news at all, if the tech is shared?

Because the real story sitting underneath the press release is what's happened to MSE's balance sheet over the last 20 months — and it's a much bigger deal than one ₹25 crore bond.

MSE has held its EBP licence since 2016. In FY26, its entire operating revenue was ₹3.4 crore, against a net loss of ₹25.8 crore (an improvement from ₹34.2 crore the year before, but still a loss). For a decade, NSE built commanding share in this business — it now holds roughly 95% of the debt RFQ market — while MSE barely registered. That wasn't a technology gap or a regulatory gap; MSE always had the same licence NSE did. It was a resourcing gap: a loss-making exchange simply couldn't afford to hire and retain the relationship bankers that bond issuers actually pick platforms based on.

That constraint has now changed dramatically. Over two rounds:

• December 2024 / January 2025: MSE raised ₹238 crore, with Billionbrains Garage Ventures (Groww's parent), Rainmatter Investments (Zerodha founders' fund), Share India Securities and Securocorp Securities India each taking roughly equal stakes at ₹2/share, pegging MSE's valuation near ₹1,200 crore.
• August 2025: MSE raised a further ₹1,000 crore, this time from a much broader consortium — Peak XV Partners, Trust Investment Advisors, Jainam Broking, Monarch Networth, and several other brokers and funds.

Total raised: roughly ₹1,238–1,240 crore — about 365 times MSE's annual operating revenue. Total equity jumped from ₹396.69 crore in FY25 to ₹1,369.29 crore in FY26. MSE's stated priority for this capital is to deepen liquidity in its equity cash segment first, then derivatives — the bond platform isn't even the headline use of funds. But it does mean MSE can now afford the one thing it never could before: a real relationship-driven debt capital markets desk, without betting the company on it.

Why Zerodha and Groww specifically matter here

A ₹59.5 crore cheque each is small change for either firm. The more interesting angle is what they represent: between Zerodha's roughly 6.5 million and Groww's roughly 13 million active investors, MSE's cap table now includes two of India's largest retail distribution networks.

That matters because Demat 2.0's later phases are explicitly aimed at retail access to corporate bonds — and tokenisation makes fractionalising a bond into small, retail-sized tickets technically straightforward. If and when that phase arrives, distribution reach — not exchange infrastructure — decides who actually gets those bonds in front of retail investors. Two of India's biggest brokers already sit on MSE's shareholder register.

There's also a credibility effect that's easy to underrate: a bond arranger deciding whether to route a deal through MSE is implicitly asking "will this platform still be relevant in three years?" A decade of losses made that a fair question. Backers like Rainmatter, Groww's parent, and Peak XV Partners change that calculus.

One more detail worth flagging: Trust Investment Advisors — the arranger on the very IIFL tokenised bond in the press release — was also one of the 29 investors in MSE's August 2025 fundraise. That's not proof of anything improper; arrangers investing in exchange platforms they work with isn't unusual. But it's a clean illustration of exactly the dynamic described above — capital and relationships arriving together.

What this doesn't mean

• Capital buys hiring capacity, not a decade of trust. Treasurers who've routed every bond issue through NSE since 2018 don't switch platforms because a new VP joined MSE.
• The bond desk may stay a secondary priority — MSE's own language points to the equity cash segment and derivatives as the primary use of the new capital.
• Demat 2.0 is still a sandbox pilot: no secondary trading yet, no retail access yet, and no announced timeline for either.
• NSE isn't standing still — it received the same infrastructure on the same day and can match fee cuts easily out of its existing scale.

What to actually track over the next few quarters: EBP results are published publicly by every exchange. The number that matters isn't the press release — it's how many bond issues, month over month, start landing on MSE's platform versus NSE's and BSE's, and whether MSE visibly builds out a debt capital markets team. Everything else is narrative.

India is minting rich people faster than almost anywhere else in the world. The number of Indians with over $30 million in net worth has jumped sharply in the last five years, and India now has over 200 billionaires — third-highest in the world. Deloitte expects professionally managed wealth in India to roughly double by FY29.

So here is the puzzle. ASK Investment Managers — one of India's oldest wealth management houses, majority-owned by Blackstone — just closed FY26 with profit after tax collapsing from ₹444 crore to ₹97 crore, a 78% fall. EPS dropped from ₹51.86 to ₹11.67.

In the middle of a boom. What happened? We went through ASK's audited FY26 annual report line by line to find out.

First, what does ASK actually do?

Founded in 1983, ASK holds one of India's earliest discretionary PMS licences (1994). Today it runs ₹77,530 crore in AUM across four distinct businesses — each earning money in a very different way.

1. Asset Management — ₹15,446 crore AUM. The original ASK business. It runs listed-equity PMS and AIF strategies for wealthy individuals and family offices, with the flagship Indian Entrepreneur Portfolio. ASK earns a management fee plus a performance fee here. Because ASK manufactures the product itself, this is by far its highest-margin rupee.

2. Private Wealth — ₹54,891 crore AUM. ASK's biggest business by size — advisory to 4,300+ HNI/UHNI families through 156 relationship managers. But roughly 74% of this AUM sits in someone else's products (third-party mutual funds, bonds, other AIFs). ASK earns distribution and advisory fees here — far thinner margins than manufacturing.

3. Alternates — ₹7,193 crore AUM. Three sub-businesses: a real-estate structured credit fund, a long-short hedge solutions platform, and a newly launched private credit business (Fund I closed at ₹540 crore). These earn fees on committed capital plus performance carry.

4. ASK Finance — a small NBFC lending arm earning interest income.

Here's the mismatch that explains the entire year: Private Wealth holds 71% of ASK's AUM but contributes only ~18% of fee revenue. Asset Management holds 20% of AUM but drives ~75% of fee revenue.

FY26 vs FY25 — the numbers (Consolidated, ₹ crore)

Revenue fell 18%. Costs rose 8%. That gap is the whole story — but it's driven by four separate things happening at once.

Revenue mix — where the ₹169 crore actually went missing

Asset management fees alone fell ₹121 crore — that's ASK's highest-margin revenue line, and it accounts for most of the damage. Meanwhile Private Wealth — the part of the business actually riding the industry's growth — grew AUM by ~₹5,800 crore and added 700+ new families, but moved the revenue needle by barely ₹7 crore. A rupee parked in a third-party fund earns a fraction of what a rupee in ASK's own PMS earns.

Four reasons behind the fall

1. The most profitable machine had a bad year. The Nifty fell ~5% in FY26. PMS/AIF gross inflows collapsed 55% YoY while redemptions rose. Performance fees, which only trigger above a hurdle, dried up.

2. ASK's own money lost money. The company holds ~₹1,290 crore of investments on its own balance sheet — largely sponsor commitments required by regulation, plus treasury. "Net gain on fair value changes" swung from +₹18 cr to −₹23 cr, and "Sponsor contribution" swung from +₹20 cr to −₹21 cr — an ₹82 crore negative swing that has nothing to do with client business and everything to do with market moves.

3. Deliberate, aggressive spending. Headcount rose from ~500 to 624. ASK hired a new CEO-Equities, a CIO, a Deputy CIO, and a Head of Sales & Distribution; relationship managers rose from 115 to 156. Employee cost jumped from ₹275 crore to ₹371 crore — ₹96 crore of extra salary in the same year revenue fell. On top of the existing business, ASK also funded four brand-new ventures: a mutual fund platform, a DIFC (Dubai) wealth office, a private credit franchise, and a non-discretionary equity advisory desk. Management's own disclosed bridge attributes roughly ₹106 crore of the profit decline to these new, not-yet-profitable initiatives.

4. The FY25 base was flattered. In FY25, ASK booked a one-time ₹119.5 crore tax provision reversal (an income-tax refund related to ESOP perquisite deductions), which turned its tax line into a net credit of ₹14 crore — pushing FY25 PAT above its own PBT. Strip that one-off out, and FY25's "real" PAT was closer to ₹325 crore. On that basis, the fall is a still-brutal 70%, not 78% — the headline comparison was never quite apples-to-apples.

One more detail: despite the profit collapse, ASK paid out ₹26 per share in interim dividends (~₹227 crore) — more than twice the year's profit — which is why net worth fell from ₹1,813 crore to ₹1,714 crore even though the company stayed profitable.

Two different "profits" in the same report

If you only read ASK's cover page, you'd see ₹277 crore PBT and ₹207 crore PAT — not the ₹171 crore / ₹97 crore in the audited numbers above. Neither is wrong; they answer different questions.

• Audited profit — what the auditors signed off on. Every rupee earned, minus every rupee spent, minus actual tax paid. This is the legal, real number: ₹171 crore PBT (before exceptionals), ₹97 crore PAT.

• "Matured business" profit — management's own adjusted view, which adds back the losses from the four new initiatives (₹45 crore in asset management, ₹61 crore in wealth — ₹106 crore total) to show what the established business alone earned.

The ₹207 crore "matured PAT" is calculated by applying a hypothetical 25.168% tax rate to the ₹277 crore — it isn't ASK's actual tax bill. The real tax paid was ₹67 crore, and the real PAT was ₹97 crore.

Is this misleading? Not necessarily — management's argument is fair: "our core engine earns ₹277 crore; we chose to spend ₹106 crore seeding four new businesses." That's genuinely useful context for a company investing in growth, and ASK does disclose the full bridge rather than hiding it. But three things are worth holding onto: the ₹106 crore is real money that left the bank account; "new initiative" is management's own label, not an audited category; and this framing can, in principle, run for years if the new businesses stay loss-making.

How does ASK compare with listed peers?

ASK isn't listed — Blackstone owns ~71%, bought in 2022 at roughly $1 billion (~₹7,700 crore). The rest trades on India's unlisted/pre-IPO market. Here's how FY26 stacks up against comparable listed wealth managers (figures independently verified from each company's own FY26 results filings):

Both listed peers grew profit sharply in the same year ASK's fell — a reminder that ASK's FY26 dip is company-specific (its revenue mix and deliberate spending), not an industry-wide problem. On reported earnings, ASK looks expensive relative to 360 ONE WAM; against Anand Rathi Wealth's rich multiple, it's actually cheaper. On book value, all three sit in a broadly similar band.

As of late August 2026, ASK's unlisted shares were quoted around ₹785–820, down 35–45% from a 52-week high of ₹1,275–1,485 — the market has already marked this down. With ~8.75 crore shares outstanding, that implies a market cap of roughly ₹6,900 crore. Strip out the ~₹1,290 crore of non-operating investments sitting on the balance sheet, and buyers are effectively paying ~₹5,600 crore for the actual fee-earning business.

What could change the story from here

The mutual fund launch. SEBI's final approval came through in FY26, with schemes going live from August 2026. ASK's PMS minimum ticket is ₹50 lakh, which locks out most of India's wealth — a mutual fund opens the door to everyone and lets ASK "catch" clients early. India's MF industry recently crossed ₹81.5 lakh crore in AUM, growing ~21% — but ASK will be a late entrant (~45th) into an increasingly price-competitive space, especially after SEBI's TER rationalisation.

Wealth build-out continuing. RMs are targeted to grow from 156 to 200+ by FY27. A new sub-UHNI segment has already added ~₹1,700 crore; the DIFC Dubai office has pulled in ₹556 crore chasing NRI money; a non-discretionary advisory desk added ₹354 crore in its first year.

Alternates scaling. Private credit Fund II got SEBI approval and launched in FY27; the real-estate fund's newest vehicle raised ₹1,350 crore — its largest ever. Alternates fees are stickier than wealth-distribution fees because they're tied to locked-in committed capital plus carry.

Operating leverage in reverse. The ₹96 crore of extra salary is already spent and headcount is already in place. If markets recover and revenue comes back, a large share of it should drop straight to the bottom line — but that only works if revenue actually returns.

And the elephant in the room: Blackstone typically holds portfolio companies for 4–7 years, and it bought ASK in 2022 — which puts a possible listing or strategic sale somewhere in the 2026–2029 window. Nothing has been announced, but it's a large part of why anyone holds this stock today.

Bottom line

ASK's FY26 is a useful case study in something people often get wrong about wealth management: AUM growth and profit growth are not the same thing. India's wealth boom is real and shows up clearly in ASK's Private Wealth AUM. But ASK's profits come mainly from manufacturing equity products — a business that is hostage to the Nifty, to gross inflows, and to performance fees that only exist above a hurdle. When markets wobbled, the profit engine stalled, while the boom-facing wealth business added revenue too thin to plug the gap. On top of that, management chose to spend over ₹100 crore building four new businesses into the downturn rather than protect the printed profit number.

Whether that turns out to be good judgement will depend entirely on whether the mutual fund, the private credit franchise, and the Dubai office are earning real money three years from now. FY26 was the year ASK paid for its ambition. FY27 onwards is when we find out what it bought.

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Introduction

GKN Driveline (India) Limited, incorporated in 1985 and headquartered in Faridabad, Haryana, is an automotive components manufacturer and part of GKN Automotive, the global driveline technology and systems business now operating under the UK-based Dowlais Group (demerged from the former GKN plc / Melrose Industries in 2023). GKN Driveline International holds a majority stake in the Indian entity. The company manufactures constant velocity joints, propshafts and connecting shafts, and drive axle assemblies for passenger cars and light commercial vehicles, supplying original equipment manufacturers both in India and overseas, and draws on a technical collaboration with GKN Driveline International, Germany, for its product and process technology. The company operates five manufacturing plants across India.

This report presents a summarised analysis of GKN Driveline (India) Limited's financial results for the year ended March 31, 2026, compared with the year ended March 31, 2025. FY26 was a year of profitable growth: revenue grew a modest 6.1% to ₹1,167 Cr, while net profit grew much faster at 26.3% to ₹123 Cr, aided by a decline in cost of materials as a share of revenue and a favourable movement in deferred tax. This drove a meaningful expansion in both EBITDA margin (+2.0 pp) and net profit margin (+1.7 pp). A distinctive feature of the balance sheet is that the company carries no borrowings in either year, funding its operations and growth entirely through equity and internal accruals — total equity grew ~24.1% during the year on the back of retained profits. The analysis below covers headline profitability metrics, a common-size cost structure, key balance sheet items, financial ratios, and a bird's-eye summary, each accompanied by brief commentary highlighting key movements and their implications.

1. Revenue, EBITDA, Net Profit & EPS Summary (₹ in Cr)

Revenue grew a modest 6.1%, but profitability grew much faster — EBITDA rose 19.4%, and PAT rose 26.3% — pointing to a genuine improvement in operating efficiency rather than growth alone. EBITDA margin expanded by 2.0% and net margin by 1.7%, aided by lower material costs and a favourable tax outcome, discussed further below.

2. Common-Size Statement (as % of Revenue, ₹ in Cr)

Cost of materials consumed eased from 52.4% to 50.9% of revenue - the single biggest driver of the margin expansion seen in Table. Employee cost ticked up slightly as a share of revenue, while depreciation stayed flat. Finance costs, though still very small in absolute terms, roughly tripled as a share of revenue (0.2% to 0.6%); given the company carries no borrowings, this rise likely reflects higher lease-related interest under Ind AS 116 rather than fresh debt.

3. Key Balance Sheet Items (₹ in Cr)

GKN Driveline's balance sheet stands out for carrying zero borrowings in both years — a genuinely debt-free capital structure. PPE stayed broadly flat, while inventories, receivables and cash all grew roughly in line with or slightly ahead of revenue growth. Trade payables were essentially unchanged YoY, suggesting stable supplier payment terms even as working capital on the asset side expanded modestly.

4. Key Ratio Analysis

Sterlite Electric (formerly Sterlite Power Transmission) is a power transmission products company that designs, manufactures and supplies overhead conductors, OPGW, EHV power cables, master system integration (MSI) services, and dark-fibre "Convergence" solutions. In October 2024 it demerged its transmission-asset ownership business (now Resonia), and FY26 is its first full year as a pure manufacturing/products company. It has filed a DRHP for an IPO.

Revenue, EBITDA, Net Profit & EPS Summary (₹ in Cr, Consolidated, Continuing Operations)

Revenue grew 26.2% on strong conductor and cable demand, but EBITDA grew only 4% as raw-material costs (mostly aluminium) rose 48%, eating two-thirds of every revenue rupee versus 56% a year earlier. Most of the PAT growth came from a lower net finance cost, not operations. Note: the P&L also shows a headline ₹746 crore figure driven by a ₹509 crore unrealised commodity-hedge gain sitting in Other Comprehensive Income — not operating profit, and expected to reverse against FY27 raw-material costs.

Segment / Order Book Mix (₹ in Cr)

Closing order book of ₹6,619 crore is about 1.06x FY26 revenue. Exports fell sharply to 7% of revenue (from 20% in FY25) even as new markets (UK, Nigeria, Oman, Nepal, Bhutan) opened up.

Key Balance Sheet Items (₹ in Cr, Consolidated)

Net worth rose ₹559 crore, but only ₹237 crore of that is earned profit — the rest is largely the unrealised ₹509 crore hedge reserve. Working capital ballooned (net working capital up from ₹1,071 cr to ₹1,686 cr) as inventories, receivables and unbilled revenue all grew faster than sales, funded partly by stretching supplier credit.

Cash Flow (₹ in Cr)

Operating cash flow nearly halved despite 30% profit growth, as the working-capital build absorbed cash. Free cash flow after capex was roughly ₹60 crore.

Key Ratio Analysis (Consolidated)

At the unlisted indicative price of ₹478 (market cap ~₹6,750 crore on a fully diluted 14.13 crore shares), Sterlite trades at roughly half of peer Apar Industries' earnings multiple (Apar: ~60x P/E, ~13x P/B). ROCE fell from 24.8% to 16.9% as capital deployed into the new Vadodara cable plant (₹311 crore CWIP) hasn't yet ramped into revenue. The ₹478 price sits almost exactly at the FY25 PE round price of ₹473, and a lender (PTC Cables) declined to exercise ₹270 crore of warrants at that same price in FY26.

India’s indigenous defence push has added another milestone with the successful drop test of the Khagantak-243, a 300-kg class long-range glide bomb developed through a partnership between Nagpur-based defence startup JSR Dynamics and Bharat Electronics Limited (BEL). The trial was conducted from a Su-30MKI fighter aircraft and reportedly achieved all planned flight objectives. With a claimed stand-off range of around 140–180 km, the weapon is designed to allow fighter aircraft to strike targets such as runways, bunkers and command centres from a safer distance.

How the Khagantak-243 Works

Unlike conventional bombs, the Khagantak-243 does not use an engine. After being released from an aircraft at high altitude and speed, its wings and control surfaces allow it to glide towards its target using aerodynamic lift. The weapon combines an Inertial Navigation System (INS) with multi-GNSS for navigation, while an optional electro-optical/infrared seeker can further improve terminal accuracy. The reported accuracy is around 10 metres without a seeker and under 5 metres with one, while the weapon carries a 125-kg Mk-81 blast-fragmentation warhead.

JSR Dynamics: From Defence Startup to Potential Manufacturer

For JSR Dynamics, the test could represent an important step toward commercialisation. The company, founded in 2018, has focused on developing defence technologies and remains in the pre-revenue stage. Under the Khagantak-243 programme, JSR Dynamics has worked on the aerodynamic airframe and control systems, while BEL has contributed the guidance electronics. The startup has reportedly raised around $19.2 million, with its January 2025 funding round taking place at ₹6,514 per share. The company has attracted institutional and angel investors as it works toward bringing its products from development into production.

The Investment Story: Trial Success Is Not Yet Revenue

The successful trial is encouraging, but investors should be careful about what it actually means for JSR Dynamics. A successful defence test does not automatically translate into a government purchase order. The weapon may still require additional testing, validation and procurement approval before large-scale production begins. The key investment trigger will therefore be the transition from successful trials → qualification → government orders → production → revenue. If JSR Dynamics can successfully navigate that process, the company could potentially move from a pre-revenue defence startup to a significant domestic defence manufacturer.

Bottom Line

The Khagantak-243 test is an important technology validation milestone for JSR Dynamics and India's private defence ecosystem, but the real value creation will come only if the technology moves from testing to actual procurement. For investors, the story is therefore less about the successful drop test alone and more about whether it can lead to orders, production, and sustainable revenue growth. Until those milestones are achieved, JSR Dynamics remains a high-potential but high-execution-risk defence startup.

Bharat Hotels Limited, incorporated in 1981, operates luxury hotels across India under The Lalit brand, spanning city hotels (Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru, Kolkata, Jaipur, Chandigarh), palaces (Udaipur, Srinagar) and resorts (Goa, Bekal, Khajuraho, Mangar). It also owns two commercial towers in Delhi (World Trade Centre and World Trade Tower). The company is unlisted, run by Chairperson Dr. Jyotsna Suri, and is majority owned by Deeksha Holding Limited (40.42%).

Revenue, EBITDA, Net Profit & EPS Summary (₹ in Cr, Standalone)

Revenue declined 3.1%, driven mainly by disruption at the Srinagar palace amid regional unrest. Yet PAT rose a strong 24.7% - not from operations, which actually deteriorated (EBITDA down 17.3%), but from a ₹52.6 crore cut in finance costs after refinancing debentures at better rates in January 2026. Operating performance weakened; profit improved purely on cheaper debt.

Revenue Mix (₹ in Cr, Standalone)

Rooms held roughly flat, but every discretionary spending line F&B, liquor, banqueting, membership fell sharply. These carry high operating leverage on a fixed cost base, which explains most of the EBITDA decline.

Key Balance Sheet Items (₹ in Cr, Consolidated)

Debt fell ₹146.6 crore in one year, cutting gearing from 44.49% to 36.35%. But ₹278.72 crore of CWIP (largely the stalled Ahmedabad hotel) has sat idle over three years, with its land-allotment deadline already lapsed and an extension still pending.

Key Ratio Analysis (Consolidated)

At an indicative price of ₹367 (market cap ₹2,794.96 cr), Bharat Hotels trades at the lowest P/E and EV/EBITDA among luxury/upscale peers (Chalet, Ventive, Juniper, EIH) - but also has the lowest net margin in the group. The discount reflects a pending ₹1,063.75 crore NDMC claim on its flagship Delhi property (roughly equal to total equity), a leasehold-heavy asset base, and no daily liquidity as an unlisted stock.

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​Garuda Aerospace Limited is an integrated drone technology company engaged in the design, development, manufacturing and deployment of unmanned aerial systems and technology-enabled drone services. Founded in 2015 and headquartered in Chennai. Its product portfolio spans agricultural drones, survey and mapping platforms, inspection systems, surveillance drones, logistics platforms and specialised defence solutions, delivered through an integrated value chain covering drone design and indigenous R&D, manufacturing and assembly, Drone-as-a-Service operations, AI and data analytics, maintenance and after-sales support, mission planning and fleet-management software, and specialised defence and strategic systems.

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Revenue, EBITDA, Net Profit & EPS Summary (₹ in Cr)

Revenue grew a strong 65.2%, reflecting scale-up across Garuda's agriculture, industrial, and Drone-as-a-Service verticals. However, profit growth (+41.1%) lagged revenue growth, as costs, notably impairment losses and cost of materials, rose faster than income, compressing both EBITDA margin and net margin. The company remains solidly profitable, but FY26's growth came with a modest trade-off in margin efficiency

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Common-Size Statement

Key Balance Sheet Items (₹ in Cr)

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Trade receivables more than doubled, far outpacing revenue growth; this is the standout working-capital trend and the main driver of the overall balance sheet expansion. Borrowings remain very small relative to the balance sheet (non-current borrowings fell to nil), suggesting this receivables build-up was funded largely through equity and internal accruals rather than debt.

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Key Ratio Analysis

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ROE held broadly steady (~11%), as strong equity growth roughly kept pace with profit growth. Fixed asset turnover improved noticeably (8.23x to 11.47x), indicating the company is generating meaningfully more revenue per unit of fixed assets, a sign of efficient scaling rather than capacity-led growth. Leverage remains very low in absolute terms (D/E of just 0.09x), even though it roughly doubled YoY off a tiny base, so the balance sheet stays conservatively funded overall.​

In October 2025, investors backed Zepto at a $7 billion valuation. Nine months later, India's largest mutual funds looked at the same company and priced it at $2.5 to $3 billion. In that window, nothing broke. Revenue more than doubled. So what changed?

It's not really one business

Most people think of Zepto as quick grocery delivery. On the numbers, it's four businesses bundled into one app: selling groceries, charging for warehousing and delivery, selling ad space to brands, and collecting subscription and franchise fees. Grocery sales, the part everyone associates with the brand, grew 92% in FY26 to ₹17,588 crore. That's the slowest growing piece of the business. Warehousing and delivery revenue grew 131%. Advertising grew 151%. Platform services jumped over 500%, though off a small base. Total revenue crossed ₹22,624 crore, up 104% from ₹11,110 crore the year before.

Where the losses actually come from

Break down every ₹100 of revenue and the story becomes clear. Zepto spends about ₹80 buying the groceries it sells, leaving roughly ₹20 of gross margin. Getting that item to your door then costs around ₹13.50 in delivery and ₹9.50 in storage, so the basic act of fulfilling the order already costs more than the margin earned on the product itself. Everything else, wages, marketing, depreciation, and interest, stacks on top of that. The encouraging part is that this gap is closing fast. Gross margin rose from 14.1% to 19.6% year on year, while delivery and storage costs fell from 26.8% of revenue to 23%. The shortfall between the two shrank from 12.7% of revenue to just 3.4%. EBITDA margin improved from negative 41.3% to negative 23.2%, and the total loss grew only modestly, from ₹4,700 crore to ₹5,905 crore, despite revenue doubling. Marketing spend rose only 17% in that same period, and the company carries zero borrowings.

The part that's actually working

For the first time in FY26, Zepto earned more from advertising than it spent running the app. Ad revenue came in at ₹1,636 crore against ad spend of ₹1,389 crore, a net positive of ₹247 crore, compared with a net loss of ₹536 crore the year before. Advertising behaves nothing like grocery. Selling a packet of biscuits earns Zepto about ₹20 and then costs ₹23 to deliver. Letting a brand pay to appear at the top of search results earns close to ₹90 of every ₹100, with no truck, no rider, and no cold chain involved. Ads made up only 7.2% of revenue in FY26, but strip them out and the year's loss jumps from around ₹5,900 crore to nearly ₹7,400 crore. It's the same playbook Amazon ran, where advertising started small and became one of the most profitable parts of the business. Zepto looks early on a similar curve.

Why the IPO got paused, not cancelled

The timeline is worth laying out plainly. Zepto raised at $7 billion in October 2025 and filed a confidential draft prospectus in December. By May 2026, regulatory feedback and market chatter had the company talking ₹11,000 to 12,000 crore. The updated filing in June proposed an ₹8,010 crore fresh issue plus a stake sale by existing investors. By July, institutional investors were indicating a value closer to $2.5 to 3 billion, and on July 31 the CEO told staff the listing would pause for one or two quarters. The filing is still live with the regulator, and the company has until roughly November 2027 to use it. The business itself kept growing through this. Orders crossed roughly 640 million for the year, more than 2.3 million a day by the March quarter, across about 1,139 dark stores. What changed was who was setting the price. A private round involves people who all benefit from a higher number. An IPO brings in buyers who owe the company nothing and are simply asking when the losses stop and whether there's enough cash to get there. On that question, the balance sheet gives a real number to work with. Zepto held about ₹4,770 crore in liquid cash and investments as of March 2026, against roughly ₹3,462 crore burned on operations that year. That works out to something like 16 months of runway. Not a crisis, but not a position that lets you insist on your own price either. Zepto isn't the only one recalibrating. PhonePe deferred its listing plans earlier this year, Flipkart and Curefoods have pushed their timelines back, and Honasa filed at close to $3 billion but listed at roughly $1.2 billion. Public markets in India have stopped treating a private valuation as settled fact.

Bottom line

Zepto's underlying numbers are genuinely improving, arguably faster than most companies its size in the country. But the market isn't pricing the growth story right now. It's pricing the gap between what the business earns on each order and what it costs to fulfil, and asking how much more capital it takes to close that gap for good. The company thinks the answer is a quarter or two. Public investors seem willing to wait and see before paying up.

Figures from Zepto Limited's FY2025-26 consolidated annual report, converted to ₹ crore, with store and order counts from the updated draft prospectus. For information only, not investment advice.

Introduction

63SATS Cybertech Limited (formerly 63SATS Global Cyber Technologies Networks Limited) is a Mumbai-headquartered cybersecurity company and a subsidiary of 63 moons technologies limited, founded in 2023. The company offers an integrated portfolio of cybersecurity solutions spanning enterprises, government and critical infrastructure, and individual consumers. Its flagship enterprise offering, Cyber Security Force (CSF), provides unified protection across networks, endpoints, cloud environments and, more recently, AI workloads, while its consumer mobile app, CYBX, equips individual users with tools against phishing, network surveillance and other digital threats, and has crossed close to 19 lakh downloads with over 2 lakh paid subscribers. The company's client base spans BFSI, defence, manufacturing and government, including names such as the Indian Navy, ICICI Securities, Adani Ports, Tata CLiQ, Marico and Lupin. In February 2026, 63SATS raised ₹245 Cr in a Series B funding round (following earlier private placements of ₹180 Cr and ₹65.05 Cr), positioning it to scale product innovation, SOC operations and threat-intelligence capabilities for the AI era.

This report presents a summarised analysis of 63SATS Cybertech Limited's financial results for the year ended March 31, 2026, compared with the year ended March 31, 2025. All figures are drawn from the company's audited financial statements and are presented in ₹ Crores for ease of reading. FY26 was a year of rapid scale-up off a very small base: total income grew roughly 31x, from ₹3.01 Cr to ₹95.15 Cr, as the company expanded its enterprise and consumer client base. The company remained loss-making at both the operating and net level, though the net loss narrowed meaningfully (from ₹16.06 Cr to ₹5.03 Cr) even as it continued to invest in people, infrastructure and product development. The balance sheet was transformed by large capital infusions during the year, with total equity swinging from a negative ₹3.50 Cr to a positive ₹297.50 Cr, sharply strengthening the company's solvency position. Given the company's early-stage, loss-making profile, several ratios below (margins, ROE) are negative or not meaningful in the traditional sense, and are presented with that context. The analysis covers headline profitability metrics, a common-size cost structure, key balance sheet items, financial ratios, and a bird's-eye summary view, each accompanied by a brief commentary highlighting the key movements and their implications.

1. Revenue, EBITDA, Net Profit & EPS Summary (₹ in Cr)

Revenue scaled roughly 31x off a very small FY25 base, reflecting the company's rapid enterprise and consumer client acquisition during the year. Despite this, both EBITDA and net profit remained negative - the company is still in an investment-heavy growth phase - but losses narrowed sharply (net loss fell ~69%) as revenue began to catch up with the fixed cost base built out during the year.

​

2. Common-Size Statement (as % of Revenue)

In FY25, the company's cost base - especially employee expense, at over 3.6x revenue - far outstripped its still-nascent revenue, typical of an early-stage business investing ahead of scale. By FY26, with revenue up ~31x, employee cost fell to ~20% of revenue and finance cost to under 2%, showing early signs of operating leverage even though the business is not yet profitable. Cost of Goods Sold appears only in FY26, consistent with the ramp-up in enterprise product/hardware-linked revenue.

3. Key Balance Sheet Items (₹ in Cr)

The balance sheet expanded dramatically on the back of the FY26 capital raise - PPE grew over 70x as the company built out infrastructure, while cash, investments and receivables all scaled with the business. Encouragingly, borrowings actually fell (from ₹10.11 Cr to ₹2.57 Cr) even as the company grew, meaning growth and infrastructure build-out were funded almost entirely through fresh equity rather than debt.

4. Key Ratio Analysis

Most FY25 ratios are not meaningful because the company had negative shareholders' equity that year - a common feature of early-stage, loss-funded businesses. The picture that matters is the FY26 turnaround in the balance sheet: equity turned strongly positive, leverage is now negligible (D/E of ~0.01x), and while ROE remains slightly negative, it has moved from a fundamentally unstable base to a stable, well-capitalised one.

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Cheelizza Pizza India Limited grew revenue 17% in FY26 from ₹19.35 Cr to ₹22.65 Cr and trimmed its EBITDA loss nearly in half. On paper, that's progress. But the cash position tells a very different story: just ₹9.54 lakh across 23 outlets in 4 cities, less than what one store typically brings in during a single month.

The margin squeeze

Raw materials (flour, cheese, packaging) eat roughly 35% of revenue a manageable cost. The real pressure comes after the kitchen:

• Delivery aggregator commissions: ₹3.98 Cr (17.6% of revenue)
• Marketing & advertising: ₹1.67 Cr (7.4%)
• Rent: ₹1.95 Cr
• Power: ₹1.55 Cr
• Salaries: ₹4.57 Cr (20% of revenue)

Roughly a quarter of every rupee earned goes straight to the platforms that bring in the order a structural cost every aggregator-dependent QSR chain in India is wrestling with right now.

FY26 vs FY25 P&L

What the auditors flagged

• Cash losses: ₹2.27 Cr in FY26, on top of ₹4.08 Cr in FY25
• Loan repayments to multiple lenders (Capwise, Incred, Indifi, ICICI) running 30–120 days late through the year
• TDS deducted from salaries between April–August 2025 was deposited with the government only in May 2026 about a year overdue
• ESI dues of ₹11.13 lakh and labour welfare fund dues of ₹28,689 remained unpaid as of the audit data

Negative net worth

Accumulated losses of ₹16.21 Cr have wiped out share capital and premium, leaving total equity at −₹15 lakh as of 31 March 2026. Current liabilities of ₹6.14 Cr sit against current assets of just ₹2.50 Cr a current ratio of 0.41. Strip out the ₹2.56 Cr deferred tax asset (which only has value if the company eventually turns a taxable profit), and net worth falls closer to −₹2.7 Cr.

Who actually financed the year

Operating losses of ₹1.60 Cr (loss before tax adjusted for depreciation and finance cost) explain only part of the ₹5.42 Cr cash outflow from operations. The rest went toward repaying ₹2.84 Cr of short-term borrowings and clearing ₹1.25 Cr of overdue liabilities carried from the prior year. Add ₹0.93 Cr of capex and ₹0.60 Cr locked up as a lien-bound fixed deposit against a working capital facility, and the total funding gap for the year came to roughly ₹6.95 Cr.

The "long-term borrowings" line is the one worth sitting with secured bank loans actually fell to zero during the year. That ₹2.43 Cr came from Managing Director Animesh Lodha personally, who advanced ₹7.27 Cr to the company over FY26 and drew back ₹6.01 Cr, leaving ₹2.47 Cr outstanding. In effect, the promoter's own account functioned as the company's working capital line.

The valuation gap

Cheelizza's pre-IPO shares have recently traded around ₹12–13, down sharply from a 52-week high near ₹78. Even at that lower price, the implied valuation of ~₹135 Cr works out to roughly 6x revenue rich for a business with negative equity and negative EBITDA.

Separately, the company is raising capital via Compulsorily Convertible Preference Shares priced at ₹10,000 each, of which only ₹100 per share has been called and received so far ₹1.82 lakh collected in total as of year-end.

Governance notes

The audit committee, nomination & remuneration committee, and the statutory POSH committee were all constituted only after 31 March 2026. The statutory auditor resigned mid-term. And the AGM polling paper lists a resolution on rights-issue fund utilization that isn't part of the actual notice — worth a closer look for anyone tracking the paper trail.

Bottom line

A 100%-vegetarian QSR chain is a real, underserved category in India, and Cheelizza's ₹98 lakh average revenue per outlet isn't a bad number. But growth alone hasn't fixed the balance sheet it's been financed by promoter loans and a rights issue that went almost entirely toward debt repayment, not expansion. The next 12–18 months hinge on three things: store-level cash profitability, genuine equity capital rather than founder advances, and reduced dependence on aggregator commissions.

Based on Cheelizza Pizza India Limited's FY 2025–26 annual report, audited by APRA & Associates LLP. Not investment advice. Pre-IPO/unlisted shares carry limited liquidity and regulatory oversight.

Introduction

63SATS Cybertech Limited (formerly 63SATS Global Cyber Technologies Networks Limited) is a Mumbai-headquartered cybersecurity company and a subsidiary of 63 moons technologies limited, founded in 2023. The company offers an integrated portfolio of cybersecurity solutions spanning enterprises, government and critical infrastructure, and individual consumers. Its flagship enterprise offering, Cyber Security Force (CSF), provides unified protection across networks, endpoints, cloud environments and, more recently, AI workloads, while its consumer mobile app, CYBX, equips individual users with tools against phishing, network surveillance and other digital threats, and has crossed close to 19 lakh downloads with over 2 lakh paid subscribers. The company's client base spans BFSI, defence, manufacturing and government, including names such as the Indian Navy, ICICI Securities, Adani Ports, Tata CLiQ, Marico and Lupin. In February 2026, 63SATS raised ₹245 Cr in a Series B funding round (following earlier private placements of ₹180 Cr and ₹65.05 Cr), positioning it to scale product innovation, SOC operations and threat-intelligence capabilities for the AI era.

This report presents a summarised analysis of 63SATS Cybertech Limited's financial results for the year ended March 31, 2026, compared with the year ended March 31, 2025. All figures are drawn from the company's audited financial statements and are presented in ₹ Crores for ease of reading. FY26 was a year of rapid scale-up off a very small base: total income grew roughly 31x, from ₹3.01 Cr to ₹95.15 Cr, as the company expanded its enterprise and consumer client base. The company remained loss-making at both the operating and net level, though the net loss narrowed meaningfully (from ₹16.06 Cr to ₹5.03 Cr) even as it continued to invest in people, infrastructure and product development. The balance sheet was transformed by large capital infusions during the year, with total equity swinging from a negative ₹3.50 Cr to a positive ₹297.50 Cr, sharply strengthening the company's solvency position. Given the company's early-stage, loss-making profile, several ratios below (margins, ROE) are negative or not meaningful in the traditional sense, and are presented with that context. The analysis covers headline profitability metrics, a common-size cost structure, key balance sheet items, financial ratios, and a bird's-eye summary view, each accompanied by a brief commentary highlighting the key movements and their implications.

1. Revenue, EBITDA, Net Profit & EPS Summary (₹ in Cr)

Revenue scaled roughly 31x off a very small FY25 base, reflecting the company's rapid enterprise and consumer client acquisition during the year. Despite this, both EBITDA and net profit remained negative - the company is still in an investment-heavy growth phase - but losses narrowed sharply (net loss fell ~69%) as revenue began to catch up with the fixed cost base built out during the year.

2. Common-Size Statement (as % of Revenue)

In FY25, the company's cost base - especially employee expense, at over 3.6x revenue - far outstripped its still-nascent revenue, typical of an early-stage business investing ahead of scale. By FY26, with revenue up ~31x, employee cost fell to ~20% of revenue and finance cost to under 2%, showing early signs of operating leverage even though the business is not yet profitable. Cost of Goods Sold appears only in FY26, consistent with the ramp-up in enterprise product/hardware-linked revenue.

3. Key Balance Sheet Items (₹ in Cr)

The balance sheet expanded dramatically on the back of the FY26 capital raise - PPE grew over 70x as the company built out infrastructure, while cash, investments and receivables all scaled with the business. Encouragingly, borrowings actually fell (from ₹10.11 Cr to ₹2.57 Cr) even as the company grew, meaning growth and infrastructure build-out were funded almost entirely through fresh equity rather than debt.

4. Key Ratio Analysis

Most FY25 ratios are not meaningful because the company had negative shareholders' equity that year - a common feature of early-stage, loss-funded businesses. The picture that matters is the FY26 turnaround in the balance sheet: equity turned strongly positive, leverage is now negligible (D/E of ~0.01x), and while ROE remains slightly negative, it has moved from a fundamentally unstable base to a stable, well-capitalised one.

Bombay Swadeshi Stores, the company behind the 120-year-old Bombay Store chain, closed FY26 with revenue above ₹100 crore for the first time. Profit rose 18%. Debt is almost nothing. On the surface, a clean year. Look past the headline number and the trend is a lot more mixed.

What the business actually is

No factory. No manufacturing. The company buys handicrafts, home décor, and gifting items from artisans, marks them up, and sells through 30 leased stores across 13 cities. Gross margin sits around 52%, and that markup is basically the whole business.

Because the model is "buy, stock, sell," inventory carries the balance sheet. The company holds close to ₹22 crore of stock at any time, roughly 160 days worth, since a ₹2 lakh showpiece can sit on a shelf for a year before it finds a buyer. Rent runs about 15% of revenue, the biggest cost line after goods sold. There's also a real export angle: nearly ₹18 crore of foreign exchange earnings, about 18% of revenue, largely from tourists buying at counters in cities like Mumbai and Jaipur.

One more oddity worth flagging: the company carries no bank debt at all. Its only borrowing is an interest-free loan from a promoter director. Total finance cost for the year was ₹23,000.

The year, in numbers

Revenue: ₹100.01 crore, up 12.7%.Profit after tax: ₹10.31 crore, up 18.3%.Operating cash flow: ₹7.07 crore, up roughly ninefold from ₹0.80 crore.Debt to equity: 0.20, down from 0.46.

The cash flow jump is the real story here. Most of it came from a weak FY25 comparison rather than any structural shift, but it let the company pay down ₹4.71 crore of the promoter loan, fund ₹1.45 crore of capex, and still close the year with more cash in hand.

Where the story gets less clean

Store count went from 27 to 30, an 11% jump. Revenue grew 12.7%. Do the simple division and revenue per store barely moved, from ₹3.29 crore to ₹3.33 crore. New stores don't get a full year of sales, so this isn't a perfect comparison, but the company doesn't publish same-store growth either, so there's no clean way to tell whether existing stores are actually improving or whether the top line is just riding new square footage.

Costs are rising faster than sales too. Staff expense climbed 18.5% as headcount grew from 213 to 245, and rent rose almost 13%, both ahead of revenue growth.

There's also a legal overhang worth knowing about. One store, in Pune, is tied up in an eviction dispute with its landlord. The company has ₹5.21 crore locked with the court as a deposit, about 15% of its entire net worth, plus ₹5.5 lakh going out every month in interim compensation while the case runs.

Zoom out to two years and the picture sharpens further. Revenue has grown about 9.7% a year since FY24. Profit has grown roughly 2% a year over the same stretch, mostly because FY25 was genuinely weak before FY26 recovered some of that ground. Net margin was 11.9% in FY24 and sits at 10.3% now.

What the current price implies

Indicative levels on the unlisted market have this stock around ₹470 a share, putting the company's value near ₹232 crore. At that price you're paying about 22.5 times FY26 earnings and 6.5 times book value.

The book value multiple looks much cheaper than it did two years ago, but that's mostly an accounting effect: the company pays no dividend, so every rupee of profit stays on the balance sheet and book value keeps climbing even if the underlying business isn't growing much faster. Earnings, meanwhile, are close to where they were in FY24.

Also worth noting: because the company reports under older accounting standards, its store leases don't show up as liabilities the way they would for a listed peer. That flatters both its debt ratios and its return ratios versus companies you'd normally compare it to.

Bottom line

A no-debt, cash-generating, 120-year-old brand with 52% gross margins is a genuinely attractive setup. But almost 90% of the company sits with three promoters, there's no dividend, no stated plan to list, and a float of only about 5.5 lakh shares to trade. Growth right now looks more like new stores opening than existing stores getting better, and two-year profit growth is nowhere near as strong as the FY26 headline suggests on its own.

This is a bet on FY26 being the start of a real recovery, not a one-year bounce. Worth understanding that distinction before pricing it in.

Based on Bombay Swadeshi Stores Limited's FY26 annual report. For information only, not investment advice. Unlisted shares are illiquid and difficult to exit.

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Cochin International Airport Ltd. (CIAL), the operator of Cochin International Airport, has reported its highest-ever profit in FY26. The company posted a standalone net profit of ₹502 crore, while its consolidated profit, including subsidiaries, stood at ₹526.75 crore. Total consolidated income rose to ₹1,492 crore, and the board recommended a 55% dividend.

At first glance, the numbers suggest another strong year for CIAL. However, the growth in profit was not driven by a sharp increase in passenger traffic. Passenger numbers increased only 2.2% to around 1.14 crore, while total aircraft movements actually declined by 3.9%. Domestic aircraft movements fell nearly 6%, while international movements declined about 1%

How CIAL makes money

CIAL generates revenue from two broad sources. Aeronautical revenue comes from airport-related charges such as landing fees, User Development Fees (UDF), parking and aerobridge charges. This contributed around ₹742 crore, or 65% of standalone revenue, in FY26.

The remaining ₹399 crore came from non-aeronautical activities such as rentals, commercial services and duty-free operations. Interestingly, rent and services generated ₹273.8 crore, making it CIAL's largest individual revenue stream. This highlights that CIAL is not simply an airport operator; a significant part of its business comes from commercial real estate and leasing.

The company also operates through subsidiaries covering duty-free retail, maintenance and repair operations (MRO), infrastructure and the proposed Air Kerala airline.

Profit rises, but underlying growth is moderate

Consolidated revenue from operations increased 7% to ₹1,401 crore, while EBITDA rose 2.9% to ₹907 crore. Reported PAT increased only 2.2% to ₹526.75 crore, partly because expenses increased faster than revenue.

However, FY26 included a nearly ₹28 crore loss on fixed assets that were sold, demolished or discarded. This appears connected to the airport's expansion activity and is not a normal recurring expense. Excluding this item, consolidated profit growth would have been closer to 6.2%.

Another positive is CIAL's balance sheet. Finance costs declined 18%, while standalone debt fell from ₹401 crore to ₹277 crore. The company also had around ₹936 crore in cash and bank deposits at year-end.

The key issue: what happens after FY26?

The biggest question for CIAL is its regulated tariff structure. AERA's five-year tariff period ended on 31 March 2026, and much of FY26's revenue growth came from revised aeronautical tariffs rather than higher passenger volumes. The new tariff period will therefore be crucial for future earnings.

CIAL is also investing around ₹1,300 crore in airport expansion, while looking for additional growth through real estate, MRO, cargo and airport consultancy. These businesses provide long-term opportunities, but they are unlikely to replace tariff-led growth immediately.

At an indicative unlisted share price of around ₹455, CIAL's market capitalisation is about ₹21,760 crore, implying a consolidated P/E of roughly 41x. With earnings growing at mid-single digits, the valuation leaves limited room for disappointment.

In simple terms, CIAL remains a highly profitable airport business with a strong balance sheet and several long-term growth opportunities. But the record FY26 profit should not be mistaken for strong volume-led growth. The key factor to watch now is AERA's new tariff order, which could have a major impact on CIAL's earnings in FY27 and beyond.

Imagine Marketing Limited, the parent of boAt, just closed a financial year where revenue fell and profit rose sharply. On the surface that looks like a company finally hitting its stride. Look at where the extra profit actually came from, and the picture gets more complicated, especially with an IPO on the horizon and a private-market valuation that was set years ago under very different assumptions.

The Headline Numbers

Revenue from operations dropped from ₹3,062.83 crore in FY25 to ₹2,928.08 crore in FY26, a decline of about 4.4%. Despite that, profit for the year rose from ₹64.22 crore to ₹92.15 crore, up roughly 43.5%. Profit before tax climbed even more sharply, from ₹83.37 crore to ₹123.93 crore, a jump of nearly 49%.

That combination, less revenue but meaningfully more profit, is unusual enough to be worth digging into. It didn't happen because boAt sold more. It happened because several cost lines shrank.

An Asset-Light Business by Design

boAt's financials make its operating model fairly obvious once you look past the brand. The company's property, plant and equipment stood at just ₹13.1 crore, a tiny number for a business generating close to ₹2,930 crore in revenue. There's no meaningful raw-material cost either. Instead, the largest line item on the expense side is "purchases of stock-in-trade," which came in at ₹2,047.54 crore, essentially finished products bought in and sold on.

In practice, this means boAt designs and markets products rather than manufacturing them itself. Production is outsourced to contract manufacturers, with a domestic manufacturing tie-up run through a joint venture with Dixon Technologies that sits outside boAt's own books. This kind of structure keeps capital requirements low, but it also means the company has relatively little to differentiate itself on besides its brand, since the underlying hardware, components, and even factories are accessible to competitors too.

That's likely why advertising remains such a large expense relative to everything else the company spends on product development. Advertisement and promotion expenses came in at ₹339.76 crore for FY26, down from ₹389.72 crore in FY25, a cut of nearly 13%. For comparison, spending on research and development was a small fraction of that. In a business built on brand recognition rather than proprietary technology, marketing effectively functions as the company's core investment.

Where the Extra Profit Actually Came From

Three specific changes explain most of the swing in profitability.

The wearables segment stopped losing money. boAt's Wearables division, largely smartwatches, had posted a segment-level loss of around ₹46 crore in FY25. In FY26, that same segment turned a small profit of roughly ₹2.9 crore. The improvement isn't dramatic in absolute terms, but the direction matters. India's smartwatch category has become intensely price-competitive, with margins compressed across most brands, and boAt appears to have pulled back from chasing volume there in favour of protecting margin.

Marketing spend was scaled back. As noted above, advertising and promotion fell from 12.7% of revenue to roughly 11.6%. That's close to ₹50 crore in savings flowing more or less directly to the bottom line. The trade-off is that brand visibility isn't free to maintain; reduced ad spend today can show up as softer sales later if the pullback continues.

Warranty costs declined sharply. Warranty expenses fell from ₹82.58 crore to ₹57.50 crore, a drop of over 30%. This could reflect genuine improvements in product quality, a reduction in customer claims, or some combination of both, and the annual report doesn't fully separate the two explanations.

Taken together, these three factors, a smaller wearables loss, lower ad spend, and fewer warranty payouts, account for the bulk of the profit improvement. None of them involve selling more product.

A Concentrated Customer Base

One detail in the disclosures stands out: two customers accounted for ₹1,692 crore of boAt's total sales, or about 58% of everything the company sold in FY26. The company doesn't name these customers directly, but given boAt's description of itself as scaling through major online marketplaces, it's not hard to guess the general nature of these relationships.

This concentration is a natural consequence of an online-first distribution strategy. Selling primarily through large e-commerce platforms avoids the cost of physical retail, but it also hands considerable negotiating leverage to those platforms over commissions, visibility, and placement. It may also explain why the company has been investing in a distributor network across smaller cities, an offline channel that's slower and lower-margin to build, but one the company controls directly rather than renting shelf space, so to speak, from a marketplace.

A Shift Inside the Product Mix

Audio products, the earphones and headphones that built the boAt brand, saw revenue fall by about 10% in FY26. Meanwhile, the "Others" category, covering chargers, cables, gaming accessories, and grooming products, grew by around 60%. The company's most recognisable product line is shrinking as a share of the business, while a less headline-grabbing category is expanding quickly. Whether that shift continues, and whether it can offset softness in audio, is one of the more interesting open questions in the results.

The IPO Context

None of this is happening in a vacuum. Imagine Marketing has filed IPO papers with SEBI, covering a fresh issue of ₹500 crore and an offer for sale of ₹1,000 crore by existing shareholders, with the company's draft filings having gone through the regulatory review process ahead of an expected listing on the NSE and BSE.

It's worth being careful here: as of now, this remains a filed IPO working through the regulatory process rather than a confirmed listing with a fixed date. Timelines for IPOs can shift, and market conditions between filing and listing sometimes change the final structure or size of the offer.

Companies preparing to list naturally want their most recent financial year to look disciplined, and a year showing margin improvement, cost control, and a turnaround in a previously loss-making segment fits that narrative well. That doesn't mean the numbers are misleading, the wearables improvement and cost reductions appear to be real, reported figures. But the timing is still worth keeping in mind when evaluating how representative FY26 is likely to be of future years.

Doing the Valuation Math

Imagine Marketing has roughly 15.06 crore diluted shares outstanding. On a consolidated basis, FY26 profit came in around ₹84.5 crore, which works out to earnings per share of roughly ₹5.61.

The multiple a market is willing to pay on that earnings figure depends heavily on growth expectations. A company growing revenue at 30% a year might reasonably command a premium multiple. boAt's revenue, however, fell in FY26, its largest category shrank, and this year's profit gain came primarily from cost discipline rather than expanding sales, discipline that has a natural ceiling once the easy cuts are made.

For a consumer brand in that position, without owning its manufacturing and with over half its sales concentrated in two customers, a more conservative earnings multiple in the range of roughly 35 to 40 times looks more realistic than an aggressive growth multiple. Applying that range to ₹84.5 crore in profit puts an implied valuation somewhere between approximately ₹3,000 crore and ₹3,400 crore.

Compare that to where the company was privately valued in the past. In October 2022, Imagine Marketing raised ₹500 crore from Warburg Pincus and Malabar Investments in a round that reportedly valued the company at close to $1.2 billion, in the range of ₹9,500 to ₹10,900 crore depending on the exchange rate used at different points. Early IPO speculation had floated figures closer to $1.5 billion, or roughly ₹12,500 crore.

Set against an earnings-based estimate of ₹3,000 to ₹3,500 crore today, that's a substantial gap, potentially two-thirds lower than the peak private valuation. Framed differently, a ₹10,900 crore valuation on FY26's ₹84.5 crore profit implies a multiple well above 100 times earnings, a level that only makes sense if the growth rates seen during the 2021-22 funding boom were expected to continue indefinitely. They haven't.

The Bigger Picture

Imagine Marketing isn't a one-off case. A number of Indian consumer-facing startups raised capital at valuations set during the 2021-22 period, based on growth assumptions from that era, and are now approaching public markets that tend to price businesses on actual, current profitability rather than projected trajectories.

There's a case for a higher valuation too. Brand strength, an established customer base, and the possibility that investors value the business on revenue scale rather than profit, the way some consumer brands have been valued in the past, could push pricing above a pure earnings-multiple estimate. And if the IPO is ultimately priced below the 2022 private round, that isn't necessarily a failure; it may simply reflect a more grounded valuation than the one set during a very different funding environment.

For anyone evaluating this company, whether through the IPO or through unlisted shares beforehand, the more useful question isn't whether boAt turned a profit this year. It's whether that profit holds up once marketing spend normalises, and what the business is actually worth if audio sales keep declining while cost-cutting reaches its limits.

This analysis is based on figures reported in Imagine Marketing Limited's FY2025-26 annual report and publicly available reporting on its 2022 funding round and IPO filing. Valuation figures presented here are illustrative estimates based on standard earnings-multiple reasoning, not a recommendation to buy, sell, or value the company at any specific price. Readers should refer to the company's official filings and consult a qualified financial advisor before making investment decisions.

​Sun Drops Energia Limited will be convening an Extraordinary General Meeting (EGM No. 02/2026-27), as per the Notice issued on August 21, 2026, which will take place on Monday, September 14, 2026. The meeting will commence at 09:30 AM IST at the registered office of the company.

Key Agenda Items for the EGM:

• Increase in Authorised Share Capital: Approval for increase in the Authorised Share Capital from INR 50,00,00,000 (comprising of 10,00,00,000 Equity Shares of INR 5 each) to INR 50,80,00,000 (comprising of 10,00,00,000 Equity Shares of INR 5 each and 16,00,000 Preference Shares of INR 5 each) by way of creation of 16,00,000 Preference Shares, together with amendment of Clause V of the Memorandum of Association.
  
• Acquisition of Target Company: Approval for the acquisition of up to 1,70,84,853 equity shares which are fully paid-up (upto 100% of equity share capital) of DEK and Mavericks Green Energy Limited at a price of INR 32.66 per equity share, aggregating to INR 55,80,44,927.
  
• Issue of CCPS on preferential basis: Approval for issuance and allotment of up to 15,89,781 Compulsorily Convertible Preference Shares (CCPS) of face value INR 5 each at an issue price of INR 351.02 per CCPS (inclusive of premium of INR 346.02 per CCPS) on preferential basis for consideration other than cash
  
• Terms and Conversion of CCPS: CCPS have a non-cumulative preferential dividend rate of 0.01%, and they shall be compulsorily converted to Equity Shares at the ratio of 1:1 during a period not exceeding 12 months from the date of allotment or submission of RHP to SEBI, whichever is earlier.

EGM Logistics Information: