Ekart At Crossroads, Startup Funding Rebounds & More

Will Ekart Deliver On Time This Time? 

In a cruel twist of corporate irony, Myntra is ditching Ekart, its in-house logistics platform, to win the quick commerce race. So, how did Flipkart’s $500 Mn bet on logistics fall short — to the point where even its own group companies are hesitant to use it?

The Achilles Heel: Designed for Flipkart’s two-to-three-day delivery playbook, Ekart’s business model was optimised for cost, not speed. Ekart’s operational DNA — built around large warehouses on city outskirts — makes it ill-suited for hyperlocal and fast commerce. Its long-haul trucks and inter-city workforce pale in comparison to the agile fleets of rival logistics firms and quick commerce players delivering in minutes.

A Financial Drag: For Ekart, pivoting to quick commerce will require a complete overhaul — new dark stores, separate fleets, and a fresh tech stack. Flipkart may resist this capital-intensive exercise, as it is going all out to cut costs ahead of its IPO. Making matters worse is Ekart’s losses, which ballooned 5X YoY to INR 1,718 Cr while revenue declined 5% YoY to INR 12,115 Cr in FY24.

Amazon Shows The Way: Amid its struggles, Ekart may learn a thing or two from its direct competitor. Amazon Transportation Services grew its revenues 7% YoY to INR 4,543 Cr while trimming losses 6.9% YoY to just INR 80 Cr. Its secret weapon? Superior tech stack and demand prediction algorithms that make Ekart look stone-aged.

All said and done, what may work in Ekart’s favour is its years of experience and the granular data it has mined in the last decade. But, with quick commerce rewriting the rules of logistics, can Ekart reinvent itself?

From The Editor’s Desk

Funding Picks Up Pace: Indian startups mopped up $272 Mn across 18 deals last week, up 38% from the $197.4 Mn garnered by 25 startups in the preceding week. Truemeds and Zepto topped the charts by raising $65 Mn and $46 Mn, respectively.

Rapido’s Ownly Goes Live: The ride-hailing giant has rolled out its food delivery service in three pockets of Bengaluru. Taking on giants like Zomato and Swiggy, Ownly is looking to poach customers from rivals by offering zero delivery fees and budget meals. 

New-Age Tech Stocks Revive: Of the 36 new-age tech stocks under Inc42’s coverage, 21 gained in a range of 0.31% to nearly 50% last week. With this, m-cap of startup stocks crossed $100 Bn. Yatra and ixigo were the biggest gainers, zooming 47.9% and 14.27%, respectively. 

makeO Acquires Apple Dental: The parent of dental tech startup toothsi has acquired the Andhra Pradesh-based dental clinic chain for INR 11 Cr in a cash-and-stock deal. makeO offers dental, skin and hair treatments.

India’s Semicon Push: India is developing a silicon-based fabrication facility, with a capacity of 50,000 wafer starts per month. IT minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said that six units – one fab and five assembly, testing, marking and packaging units – are under construction.

Tracking Listed Startups: In the last five years, the number of listed startups in India has zoomed to 40. The median stock price increase for profitable companies has been 31% since their listing, while the loss-making ones have witnessed a decline of 42%.

Startups’ FY25 Scorecard: Forty-three startups reported a cumulative revenue of INR 1.26 Lakh Cr in FY25, up 36.4% YoY. While 15 reported a cumulative net loss of INR 8,086.4 Cr in the fiscal under review, the remaining posted a cumulative net profit of INR 4,577 Cr.

Zoomcar’s Sombre Q1: The car rental marketplace’s net loss widened 66% to $4.2 Mn in the quarter ended June 2025 from $2.5 Mn in the year-ago quarter. The Nasdaq-listed company’s revenue from services grew 5% to $2.3 Mn from $2.2 Mn a year ago. 

Inc42 Startup Spotlight

Using AI To Sniff Out Shady Biz Deals

In an era where a handshake isn’t enough, manual background and due diligence checks have become a risky, cost-intensive, error-prone and time-consuming business. Founded in 2024, Hound aims to solve this problem with AI. 

Instant Risk Checks: Hound has developed two key tools to provide smarter, faster, and reliable risk assessments. The startup’s first product provides an instant global risk assessment assistant, scanning thousands of data points, to identify and flag potential risks. 

The second offering is an expert-level forensic audit engine, which analyses financial documents like annual reports to automatically detect red flags such as tax discrepancies or related-party transactions.

Hound’s AI Edge: The startup leverages AI to automate a traditionally manual and expensive process, allowing companies to conduct a thorough financial health check in a fraction of the time. It also monitors for new threats in real time, notifying users as they arise.

A Steady Start: Within a year of its inception, Hound claims to have already crossed 100 early signups and is looking to secure five enterprise pilot projects soon. It aims to take its paid user base to 100 by the end of this year and clinch 10 enterprise projects by 2027.

With the Indian risk assessment market projected to become a $1 Bn opportunity by 2033, can Hound’s AI-powered approach help it capitalise on this growing opportunity?