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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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)

Particulars	FY26	FY25	YoY Change
Revenue (Total Income)	95.15	3.01	+3,061% (~31x)
EBITDA	(3.88)	(15.18)	+ 74.4%
EBITDA Margin	-4.08%	-504.3%	+500.2 %
Net Profit / (Loss)	(5.03)	(16.06)	+68.7%
NP Margin (NPM)	-5.29%	-533.6%	+528.3 %
EPS (Basic & Diluted, ₹)	(0.26)	(3.68)	+ 92.9%

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.

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

Particulars	FY25 (₹ Cr)	FY25 (% of Rev)	FY26 (₹ Cr)	FY26 (% of Rev)
Revenue (Total Income)	3.01	100.00%	95.15	100.00%
Cost of Goods Sold	0.00	0.00%	40.08	42.13%
Employee benefit expense	11.05	367.11%	19.27	20.25%
Finance costs	0.74	24.59%	1.74	1.83%
Depreciation & amortisation	0.14	4.65%	0.74	0.78%

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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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)

Particulars	FY26	FY25	YoY Change
Revenue (Total Income)	95.15	3.01	+3,061% (~31x)
EBITDA	(3.88)	(15.18)	+ 74.4%
EBITDA Margin	-4.08%	-504.3%	+500.2 %
Net Profit / (Loss)	(5.03)	(16.06)	+68.7%
NP Margin (NPM)	-5.29%	-533.6%	+528.3 %
EPS (Basic & Diluted, ₹)	(0.26)	(3.68)	+ 92.9%

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.

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

Particulars	FY25 (₹ Cr)	FY25 (% of Rev)	FY26 (₹ Cr)	FY26 (% of Rev)
Revenue (Total Income)	3.01	100.00%	95.15	100.00%
Cost of Goods Sold	0.00	0.00%	40.08	42.13%
Employee benefit expense	11.05	367.11%	19.27	20.25%
Finance costs	0.74	24.59%	1.74	1.83%
Depreciation & amortisation	0.14	4.65%	0.74	0.78%

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.

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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.

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.

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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:

A shell company under OYO's umbrella, OYO Financial and Technology Services, had barely anything on its books in March 2025: no hotels, no real revenue, just ₹2.5 crore in assets. A year later it had been renamed Sunday Proptech Limited and had grown into a company worth ₹7,117 crore in total assets, running hotels across the US, Dubai, the UK, and India, with 49 subsidiaries under it. OYO's ownership share dropped from nearly 100% to just 31% in that same window. This wasn't organic growth. It was a company built from scratch in twelve months through acquisitions, borrowing, and a major shareholder reshuffle.

How the business actually works

Most hotel companies pick a lane: either you own the real estate and collect rent, or you operate the hotel and take a management fee. Sunday Proptech is trying to do both at once, buying underperforming but well-located hotels, fixing them up, and running them directly so it captures both the property value and the operating profit.

It holds these hotels three different ways. Some are owned outright (mostly in the US, worth around ₹4,590 crore). Some are on long-term leases, which is a cheaper way to enter a market and is how it operates in Dubai and the UK. And some are managed on behalf of other owners, which needs no capital at all.

What's notable is what it chose not to build. It doesn't have its own hotel brand or booking technology. Instead it licenses brand names like Motel 6 and Studio 6 in the US from G6 Hospitality, and uses OYO's own brands (Sunday Hotels, Palette, Townhouse) in India and the Gulf. The entire cost of licensing all these brands for the year came to just ₹2.4 crore, a tiny fraction against a ₹7,117 crore asset base. The logic is that building brand recognition and tech from the ground up only pays off once you're operating at massive scale, so for now it's cheaper to rent that infrastructure.

Where the money is versus where the money comes from

The clearest way to see the strategy is to compare where the assets sit against where the revenue is actually coming from.

The US holds nearly three-quarters of all assets but only produced about a sixth of total revenue. That's because most of the American hotels were bought late in the financial year and are still being renovated, so they haven't started earning yet. Dubai shows the opposite pattern: a smaller asset base but the biggest revenue contribution, because it runs mostly on leases that generate rental income right away without tying up large amounts of capital. India, despite being where OYO started and where most people know the brand from, barely registers here with just ₹6 crore in revenue.

The 38 hotel purchase and an accounting quirk worth understanding

During the year, the company bought 38 hotel properties in the US for roughly ₹3,178 crore. Eight of them came from two sellers in November 2025, and the rest were picked up from various sellers before the year closed. All of these are being converted into the extended-stay format under the Motel 6 and Studio 6 brands.

Here's the part that needs a careful look. When a company buys a business, its auditors assess the fair value of everything acquired. In this case, the auditors valued the acquired property at ₹4,504 crore, well above the ₹3,178 crore actually paid. After subtracting a deferred tax liability of ₹278 crore, that leaves a gap of roughly ₹1,047 crore. Accounting rules call this a "bargain purchase gain," and management is framing it as proof they negotiated well and got more value than they paid for.

Three things are worth keeping in mind about that gain. First, it isn't cash. No money moved into the bank because of it; it's purely a valuation adjustment sitting in the capital reserve. Second, this single gain makes up about 78% of the company's entire net worth of ₹1,350 crore, meaning if you strip it out, the balance sheet looks a lot thinner. Third, the report itself notes that the purchase price allocation hasn't been finalized yet. These are provisional numbers based on management's own assessment, and while they don't expect big changes, nothing is locked in.

Also worth noting: those same 38 hotels only generated ₹44 crore in revenue since they were acquired, and actually posted a pre-tax loss of ₹28.6 crore. They've been bought, but they haven't been fixed yet.

Who's actually behind the company

A year ago ownership was simple: OYO's parent, Oravel Stays, held basically all of it. That changed after the company issued new shares through a private placement, raised about ₹239 crore, and added a large batch of bonus shares. The ownership table now looks very different.

OYO never sold any shares, it simply got diluted as new shares were issued to others. But the effect was significant: the terms of these new share agreements meant OYO lost operational control of the company. It's no longer treated as the parent company in accounting terms and is now booked as a joint venture partner instead.

Two details stand out here. The new largest shareholder, Astera Ventures, was renamed from something called Tattva Valuers Private Limited around the same time all this was happening. And the annual report explicitly states the company has no identifiable promoter and is professionally managed, meaning the ultimate owner behind that biggest shareholder isn't disclosed anywhere in the filing.

The debt picture

Borrowing exploded over the year. Total borrowings sit at ₹3,203 crore, and once you add lease obligations of ₹2,171 crore and other financial liabilities, then subtract the small amount of cash on hand, net debt comes to roughly ₹5,443 crore against equity of just ₹1,350 crore. That's a debt to equity ratio of about 4 times, up from just 0.34 times the year before.

The reported interest expense is a bit misleading too. Finance costs for the year came to ₹115 crore, but only ₹22 crore of that was actual interest on loans; most of it was interest tied to lease obligations. That's because the biggest loan facility, ₹1,850 crore from Citibank, was only drawn down eleven days before the financial year ended. On a full year basis, interest on the total borrowings at a typical rate of 9 to 10% would likely run north of ₹280 crore, meaning the real interest burden hasn't shown up in these numbers yet.

Most of the lending is secured directly against the American hotel portfolio, largely through Citibank, with a mix of other lenders including mezzanine financing, private placement notes, and some high interest loans from entities that are also shareholders in the company, like InCred and Astera Ventures. One of the lenders, RA Hospitality Holdings, is linked to OYO's founder.

The revenue dependency that stands out most

This is probably the most important thing to understand about the company right now. Total revenue from operations was ₹269 crore, and rental income alone made up ₹223 crore of that, or 83% of the total.

Looking at the related party disclosures, nearly all of that rental income traces back to other OYO group entities: OYO's Dubai hotel management arm, its UK operating company, its vacation rentals business, and a few smaller OYO-linked entities. Adding those up gets you almost exactly to the ₹223 crore rental income figure. The geographic pattern matches too: revenue from Dubai, the UK, and India lines up closely with payments from OYO group companies in those same markets.

In other words, essentially all of the rental income is coming from within the OYO ecosystem itself. The only revenue that comes from genuinely outside parties is the roughly ₹46 crore earned from the American hotels' actual guest bookings.

Management describes the relationship with OYO as a partnership rather than a dependency. That's fair when it comes to brand licensing, which only costs ₹2.4 crore. But when 83% of total revenue comes from the same corporate family, and all these related party deals are disclosed as being done at arm's length with a clean, unqualified audit report, the word "independent" is carrying a lot of weight.

A handful of other things worth flagging

The company paid out a dividend this year, ₹3 crore as an interim payment and another ₹1.5 crore proposed as a final payment, despite carrying over ₹3,200 crore in debt in its very first year of operating at this scale. Management calls this a signal of confidence; others might see it as cash that could have gone toward interest payments instead.

The company doesn't even have a website, a detail the annual report mentions directly when explaining why certain filings weren't uploaded online.

Governance is thin for a company this size. The board has only three non-executive directors, no managing director, and no whole-time director, despite overseeing 49 subsidiaries spread across four countries. Both the CFO and company secretary were only appointed in February 2026, just two months before the financial year closed.

And while the lease-heavy approach in Dubai and the UK is genuinely capital efficient since it doesn't require buying property outright, it isn't risk free either. Those ₹2,171 crore in lease obligations are fixed, multi-year commitments. Rent doesn't go down if a hotel's occupancy drops, and some of these lease contracts even come with financial covenants, essentially behaving the way a lender's loan conditions would.

The bottom line

What's been built here is a highly leveraged bet on turning around budget hotels in America, financed largely through foreign debt, run by a team with deep OYO ties, and currently kept afloat by rental income from OYO's own group companies. It's a coherent strategy, and the price paid for the hotel portfolio does appear to have been a good deal on paper.

But the numbers from this first year describe a company that's just getting started, not one that has proven its model works. The reported profit of ₹13.5 crore sits almost entirely on top of a ₹1,047 crore non-cash accounting gain that hasn't even been finalized yet. The real interest cost from all that new borrowing hasn't fully hit the books. The newly acquired American hotels are currently losing money. And operating cash flow of just ₹32 crore is a fairly thin cushion under net debt of ₹5,443 crore.

The year ahead is where this story will really get tested, once the full interest burden lands, once the Motel 6 conversions need to actually start filling rooms, and once it becomes clear whether revenue from outside the OYO family can grow faster than the debt taken on to build all this.

​India Exposition Mart Limited (IEML) operates a large exhibition and convention facility in Greater Noida, built across 57 acres. Its core asset comprises 17 exhibition halls, around 88,509 sq. m. of indoor space and another 78,511 sq. m. of outdoor space. The company monetizes this single physical complex through multiple complementary businesses, making it more than a conventional venue-rental company.

Six revenue engines

IEML generates revenue through third-party events, hospitality, its own exhibitions, managed events, maintenance services and its B2B digital platform, ExpoBazaar. Third-party events remain the backbone, contributing 56.44% of FY26 revenue. The company leases exhibition space to organizers and additionally earns from services such as security, housekeeping, food and beverages, medical facilities and IT support. Its recurring event calendar also provides a degree of revenue visibility.

The model is attractive because IEML can extract additional value from the same underlying asset. Its 136-room ExpoInn hotel, leased and managed hospitality properties, cafés, permanent showrooms and ExpoBazaar platform provide revenue even when exhibitions are not taking place.

Revenue growth is strong, but event volumes are falling

Revenue increased from ₹194.73 crore in FY24 to ₹290.63 crore in FY26, implying a strong growth trajectory. However, the number of events declined from 61 to 44 over the same period.

​

The divergence between revenue and event count suggests that IEML is generating more revenue per event rather than simply hosting more events. That can be positive if larger exhibitions are replacing smaller ones, but it also highlights a structural limitation: the company has a finite number of halls and operating days. Future growth therefore has to come from higher revenue per event or from businesses beyond its core venue.

FY26 exposes the cost of expansion

The biggest concern is profitability. Revenue grew 20.52% in FY26, but PAT declined 19.4%, while EBITDA margin fell from 31.98% to 22.62%. The primary reason was a sharp increase in other expenses, particularly exhibition-related costs.

Fairs and exhibition expenses rose 66.93% to ₹102.03 crore. Setup costs increased significantly because FY26 included three IHGF editions compared with one in FY25. This partly reflects a calendar shift rather than a permanent increase in underlying activity.

A second issue was licence fees. These jumped from ₹0.16 crore to ₹16.35 crore as IEML held five events at external venues versus one previously. This is strategically important: when an event is held at IEML's own venue, the company benefits from owning the infrastructure; when it operates elsewhere, it must pay another venue owner.

Balance sheet and cash flow remain strengths

Despite the margin pressure, the balance sheet is relatively conservative. Borrowings declined from ₹23.27 crore in FY24 to just ₹0.60 crore in FY26. Meanwhile, capital work-in-progress rose sharply to ₹56.27 crore, indicating investment in additional capacity. Trade receivables also increased 55% to ₹47.22 crore, faster than revenue growth.

Cash generation provides another positive signal. Operating cash flow increased from ₹38.56 crore to ₹52.84 crore in FY26 even as reported profit declined. However, capex rose dramatically to ₹62.28 crore, meaning investment requirements are beginning to absorb a significant portion of internally generated cash.

Where does the IPO money goes?

The fresh issue is primarily intended to upgrade the existing facility, including air-handling units, chillers, cooling towers, lifts and escalators, while also renovating Halls 4 and 6 and developing Hall 18. A major portion of the expenditure is scheduled for FY29.

Beyond the existing venue, management is pursuing an asset-light expansion strategy. This includes a proposed 35% stake in a Mohali convention-center SPV, expansion of its own event IPs, scaling ExpoBazaar and adding hospitality properties. However, several of these initiatives remain early-stage and some hotel concepts currently exist only as trademarks.

Investment takeaway

IEML offers exposure to India's expanding MICE ecosystem, but the investment case is more nuanced than simply betting on exhibition-industry growth. The company has a strong physical asset, multiple monetization channels, low leverage and healthy operating cash generation. At the same time, its expansion strategy is gradually moving away from its highest-margin advantage owning the venue.

The central question for investors is therefore not whether IEML can grow revenue, it clearly can but whether it can expand beyond its physical venue without permanently sacrificing the attractive economics of its core business. FY26 provides the first warning sign that growth may increasingly require accepting lower margins in exchange for a larger addressable market.

India's largest stock exchange has crossed a critical milestone in its nearly decade-long path to a public listing. The National Stock Exchange has received a No-Objection Certificate from SEBI, confirmed by NSE CEO Ashishkumar Chauhan, clearing the way for its Draft Red Herring Prospectus to move through final regulatory review.

The Decade-Long Road

NSE's IPO journey has been anything but straightforward. The exchange first filed its draft prospectus back in December 2016, but the process stalled for years amid regulatory scrutiny over preferential access to its algorithmic trading platform — the co-location controversy that would go on to define nearly a decade of delay. Multiple attempts to secure SEBI's no-objection certificate followed — in 2019, twice in 2020, and again in 2024 — each running into unresolved governance concerns.

The breakthrough came this year. SEBI decoupled the ongoing co-location settlement from the IPO approval process, allowing NSE to move forward on its listing while the legacy matter was resolved in parallel. NSE has since fully settled the case, paying a total of ₹1,491.21 crore to close out the last major legal overhang on the exchange.

Where Things Stand Today

NSE filed its DRHP with SEBI on June 17, 2026, and global investor roadshows began a month later across financial hubs including Boston, New York, San Francisco, London, Singapore, and Hong Kong, with roughly 120 large institutional investors engaged — including BlackRock, Capital Group, GQG Partners, Janus Henderson, and Allspring Global Investments. NSE has appointed 20 investment banks to manage the issue, among them Kotak Mahindra Capital, JM Financial, Morgan Stanley, HSBC, and Citigroup.

While the NOC is in hand, SEBI's final DRHP approval is still awaited — reportedly expected within the next two weeks. The approval timeline shifted after SBI Capital Markets was added to the list of selling shareholders, a change that triggered a fresh 21-day public feedback period on the offer documents.

The issue itself is structured entirely as an Offer for Sale — up to 14.89 crore shares, roughly 6% of NSE's paid-up equity, sold by existing shareholders. As an OFS, proceeds go to the selling shareholders rather than to NSE, and the share count stays fixed, so there is no dilution.

The Valuation Question

NSE is reportedly targeting a valuation of ₹5.2–5.3 lakh crore, with a potential price band of ₹2,100–2,300 per share. At the upper end, a 6% stake sale could raise close to ₹31,500 crore — which would make this India's largest-ever IPO, surpassing Hyundai Motor India's ₹27,870 crore issue.

Working off NSE's reported PAT of ₹10,302 Cr and 247.5 crore outstanding shares, here's how the implied valuation moves across a range of P/E multiples:

Since the issue is entirely an OFS, the share count stays fixed, making implied per-share values directly comparable across the multiple range. Notably, the reported target price band of ₹2,100–2,300 sits right around the 50x–55x mark — implying the market is pricing NSE close to BSE's current P/E of roughly 50x, rather than at a premium or discount to India's only other listed exchange.

The Bigger Picture

At its targeted valuation, NSE would rank around 6th globally among listed exchange operators by market value — a striking marker for an institution that spent nine years working through a single regulatory approval. With the DRHP decision now the final gate before pricing, the coming two weeks will determine whether NSE's September listing timeline holds.

Financial Performance (FY26 Numbers):

The total revenue of Sun Drops Energia Limited was at ₹586.0 crore in FY26, registering a healthy increase of around 58.8% YoY as compared to ₹369.0 crore in FY25 (and a massive exponential growth from ₹4.79 crore in FY22). Turnkey EPC for CPP and utility-scale commercial solar make up the majority of revenue, along with growing annuity-based Independent Power Producers (IPP). The Net Profit (PAT) is ₹97.0 crore with Net Profit Margin at 16.55%, witnessing an increase of ~89.1% YoY from ₹51.3 crore in FY25. With the help of its increasing order book and IPO, the valuation of unlisted equity of Sun Drops Energia was about ₹1,995 crore (ranging from ₹230 per share).

Operational Metrics:

The company Sun Drops Energia works on an integrated "IPP + CPP Turnkey EPC" business model which enables the company to cover the entire life cycle of projects starting from acquisition of land, engineering and power evacuation infrastructure to procurement, commissioning and maintenance. The company has a clean and healthy balance sheet structure with the Debt to Equity ratio of only 0.16x for FY25, which signifies low leverage and absence of dependence on external financing even with fast pace of asset creation. Sound financial control is evident with the help of an Interest Coverage ratio of 15.68x (FY25) and a Current ratio of 3.36x (FY25), thereby leaving sufficient margin for working capital. The operating leverage is a result of standard engineering templates and centralized module procurement in the KP group environment.

Key Project Executions & Order Book:

It has developed a solid execution history in the areas of utility-scale solar and industrial microgrids, which entails developing and commissioning several interconnected grid-scale solar projects in high-irradiance belts of Gujarat and Maharashtra states under the framework of the Distributed Renewable Energy Bilateral Purchase (DREBP). It has quickly established itself as one of the major market leaders in the storage category by winning 565 MW / 1,130 MWh BESS standalone projects from Gujarat Urja Vikas Nigam Limited (GUVNL), which include 445 MW / 890 MWh project award and 120 MW / 240 MWh BESS Purchase Agreement (BESPA). Abroad, Sun Drops is developing solar and battery energy storage solution with the Fabtech Group and F+ Healthcare Technologies in UAE.

Strategic Developments & Outlook:

Sun Drops Energia is an incorporated firm established in Surat, Gujarat, in May 2019 and serving as one of the major subsidiaries of KPI Green Energy Limited. Sun Drops Energia is specially selected to act as the dedicated arm of the KP Group to develop utility BESS and clean energy hybrid systems. Currently, the firm is gearing up to go for its own independent Initial Public Offering (IPO) in FY27. Given that India is looking at 500 GW of non-fossil fuel capacity by 2030 and the mandatory inclusion of RTC renewable energy, Sun Drops Energia is one of the early players in the utility-scale BESS space.

Deal Structure and Capital Infusion

​Inox Clean Energy Ltd., the renewable and clean energy platform of the INOXGFL Group, has raised a major ₹1,500 crore financing package from the Motilal Oswal Group via its alternative investments segment, MO Alternates. The deal has been executed in the form of Compulsorily Convertible Debentures (CCDs), providing a dual private credit structure that provides downside yield coverage with equity gains on listing. In terms of the arrangement, ₹1,000 crore has been raised upfront, whereas the rest of the ₹500 crore will be invested in future milestone-based tranches. The current funding round is an integral component of the firm's plan to prepare itself for an IPO in the coming 12 to 24 months.

Strategic Allocation and Capacity Expansion

The new investments will be deployed to fund organic capital expenditure and business acquisitions within Inox Clean Energy’s IPP business and solar equipment manufacturing segments. Regarding power generation, through Inox Neo Energies, Inox Clean Energy currently has a portfolio of about 3 GW and has set a target of increasing its portfolio to more than 6 GW by FY27, along with expanding into international markets such as Zimbabwe. At the same time, the investment will be utilized to fund its solar equipment manufacturing subsidiary, Inox Solar, which already has 3 GW of module manufacturing capability in Gujarat and an integrated 5 GW cell and module manufacturing facility under construction, apart from US-based manufacturing capabilities.

Institutional Backing and Valuation Momentum

​

1. The Headline Numbers (Consolidated)

No exceptional items, one-off gains, or provision reversals sit in these numbers — the 34.9% PAT growth is a clean, operating-driven figure.

2. Where the Revenue Growth Actually Came From

*Off a very small base.

Fees & commission — the core, recurring AMC fee income — is doing almost all the heavy lifting, growing faster (38.0%) than total revenue (32.8%). The fair-value gains line, which is more market-dependent and lumpier, grew much slower. That's a healthier growth mix than if the reverse were true.

3. Cost Side — Expenses Are Growing, But Revenue Is Outrunning Them

*Off a small base.

Employee costs (the biggest line) grew roughly in step with revenue, but "other expenses" — the catch-all operating cost bucket — barely moved (+1.9%). That's the main reason cost-to-income improved to 12.6% from 13.4%.

4. Tax Line

Current tax rose sharply, +53.6% (₹39.0 cr vs ₹25.4 cr), faster than profit growth. This was partly offset by a deferred tax credit of ₹0.30 cr this quarter vs a deferred tax charge of ₹4.13 cr a year ago, so net tax expense grew a more moderate 31.2% (₹38.7 cr vs ₹29.5 cr).

5. Below-the-Line / Notes Worth Knowing

• New subsidiary, fresh capital: PPFAS Asset Management Pvt Ltd incorporated a new wholly-owned subsidiary, PPFAS Pension Fund Managers Pvt Ltd, on 8 May 2026, and infused ₹60 crore of equity into it on 15 May 2026. It hasn't started full-scale operations yet, so no material P&L impact this quarter — but it's a capital commitment to a new business line.

• Unreviewed subsidiaries: Three smaller subsidiaries (PPFAS Alternate Asset Managers IFSC, PPFAS Trustee Company, PPFAS Pension Fund Managers) weren't directly reviewed by the auditor — their numbers rest on management certification. Combined, they contributed ₹1.39 cr of revenue and a net loss of ₹0.37 cr for the quarter, rolled into the consolidated figures.

• Dividend signal: The board has recommended ₹25/share for FY26, up from ₹15/share paid for FY25 — a 67% step-up, subject to shareholder approval at the AGM.

6. Standalone vs Consolidated

The gap is stark: consolidated PAT of ₹131.4 crore vs standalone PAT of just ₹3.09 crore. Parag Parikh Financial Advisory Services Ltd is essentially a holding company; almost all the fee-earning business (managing PPFAS Mutual Fund) sits inside its subsidiary, PPFAS Asset Management Pvt Ltd. The parent's standalone income is mostly portfolio management fees plus whatever dividend it receives from the subsidiary — and dividends are lumpy, not quarterly. In Q4 FY26 the parent received ₹25.01 crore in dividend income from PPFAS AMC (₹7/share), pushing that one quarter's standalone PAT up sharply. No such dividend landed in Q1 FY27, so standalone profit reverts to its normal, much smaller run-rate.

Anyone valuing PPFAS off standalone numbers alone will get a misleading picture — the consolidated numbers are the ones that reflect the actual business.

7. How This Stacks Up Against Peer AMCs (Q1 FY27, YoY)

PPFAS is the smallest of the four in absolute profit, but it's outgrowing all three listed peers on both revenue and profit — and it's doing so with a leaner cost structure (12.6% cost-to-income, among the tightest in the industry). For a business still building scale, that combination of high growth plus expanding margins is the more interesting story than the absolute size gap.

​

How the Share-Swap Deal Works

Shalimar Paints is set for a major transformation after its board approved a proposal to invest in its parent company, Hella Infra Market, which operates the Infra.Market building materials platform. The unusual part is that Shalimar will not pay cash for the investment. Instead, it will issue a large number of its own shares and compulsorily convertible preference shares (CCPS) to shareholders of Hella Infra Market.

In simple terms, Infra.Market is using Shalimar Paints, an already-listed company, as a route to the public markets. Under the proposed share-swap arrangement, shareholders of Hella Infra Market will hand over their shares and CCPS and receive newly issued securities of Shalimar Paints in return. After the transaction, Hella Infra Market could become an unlisted material subsidiary of Shalimar Paints, subject to shareholder and regulatory approvals.

This is why the transaction is being described as a potential reverse merger or backdoor listing. Instead of Infra.Market going through a conventional IPO, its shareholders could become major shareholders of the listed Shalimar Paints. If completed, the much larger building-materials business could effectively become the main operating business within the listed entity.

Deal Numbers

As part of the proposed non-cash share swap, Shalimar Paints plans to issue up to 41.70 crore equity shares worth ₹3,544.69 crore and 81.12 crore CCPS worth ₹6,895.22 crore, both priced at ₹85 per security. Together, the proposed swap securities are valued at around ₹10,440 crore.

Separately, Shalimar Paints has proposed a ₹1,000 crore QIP to raise fresh cash from institutional investors. It has also proposed a smaller preferential issue of around ₹105.86 crore to three investors.

The transaction would significantly increase Shalimar's share count and dilute existing shareholders. The exact impact will depend on the final swap ratio and the conversion terms of the CCPS.

What About Infra.Market's Valuation?

The ₹10,440 crore figure should not be treated as the valuation of the entire Infra.Market business. It represents the proposed consideration for the securities being exchanged in this transaction.

Infra.Market was last valued at around ₹24,000-25,000 crore in private-market fundraising. The proposed transaction therefore appears broadly consistent with that valuation, although the final swap ratio will be based on valuation reports and remains subject to approvals.

The board has also discussed the possibility of unifying Shalimar Paints and Hella Infra Market at a later stage, although no formal merger has been completed yet. For now, the key development is the proposed share swap, which could give Infra.Market a route to the stock market without a conventional IPO.