↩️Minutes Pivots↪️
Delhivery's Profit, Myntra's Visa, Zepto's Atom, Google's Walled Garden
Virat Kohli signing off from Test cricket is the cleanest rage quit in Indian sport. No farewell tour, no drama, just a quiet mic drop from the guy who made whites feel like war paint and turned five-day cricket into a mindset: relentless, unapologetic, and built to scale.
Legacy is built in sprints. Don’t get caught mid-pivot. Dive in👇
🗞️ Marketplace Buzz
Flipkart’s “Minutes” pivot goes from blitz to bunker mode, scaling down from talking 800 dark stores to maybe 500, and only in the top 6–8 cities. The burn’s brutal, tier-2 demand isn’t sticky, and CACs still look like 2021. This isn’t just Flipkart pulling back, it’s the whole category waking up. Walmart’s India bet is betting on density over dazzle.
Now that Myntra’s finally turned a ₹31 Cr profit (after a brutal ₹782 Cr loss last year), it’s not retreating, the company’s getting a visa and Singapore is the first global sandbox; this isn’t some soft diaspora play. It’s a full-stack test: cross-border logistics, pricing power, repeatability- but new markets don’t come with Indian CACs or fashion cycles. If Myntra cracks this, it’s no longer just Flipkart’s fashion cousin.
Delhivery is making money moving moves. Q4 profit: ₹72Cr. FY25 profit: ₹162Cr. But this ain’t a growth sprint- revenue crept up just 5.7% QoQ and 9.7% for the year. Delhivery got ruthless with ops: freight still gulps 70% of costs, but leaner payroll and tighter overheads clawed back margins. Valued at ₹24K Cr- this isn’t yet a “blitzscale” win, it’s a “we finally fixed unit economics” milestone.
Quick commerce didn’t just disrupt snacking; it’s quietly rerouting India’s dairy supply chain. Brands like Amul and Mother Dairy aren’t waiting for your kirana loyalty anymore; they’re pushing everything from Golden Milk to Choco Fudge through 10-minute storefronts. The insight? Dairy is no longer a replenishment category- it’s impulse + indulgence + discovery, all turbocharged by distribution.
India’s cold chain is broken where it hurts most- mid-mile. JustDeliveries just iced ₹5.5Cr to push its perishable logistics network into new cities. With ₹15.9Cr in total funding, they’re betting that reliability > speed in a space where one soggy crate kills trust, and one missed delivery makes your whole P&L smell like curdled milk.
Forget GMV flexes, Zepto just weaponised its backend. With Zepto Atom, the q-commerce unicorn is turning into a hyperlocal data vault for brands. Want PIN-code-level market share? Real-time ad impact? …looks like Atom’s got it. If this scales, Zepto won’t just sell your cola- it’ll tell you where, why, and when to price it better.
Alcohol delivery in India isn’t just about convenience anymore, it’s a full-blown ecosystem play. Platforms like Living Liquidz, HipBar, and Booozie aren’t just slinging bottles; they’re shaping how India drinks at home, blending logistics, UX, and curation. But while metros get 30-minute whisky drops, this is still a hyper-local game with state laws that gate scalability.
🍕 D2C Snippets
Premium ice cream isn’t a brand game anymore, it’s a distribution brawl. Hocco’s $10M raise isn’t funding feel-good flavours, it’s laying track for a Delhi push, warehouse ops, and a ₹450Cr revenue sprint by FY26. With 20% sales in already from q-comm, they’re betting BlinkIt shelves matter more than billboard recall.
Farmley grabs $40M with L Catterton backing the makhana mafia. ₹230Cr topline with a ₹26.5Cr loss in FY24 isn’t bad for a brand juggling kirana ops, exports, and “clean snacking” storytelling. Now Farmley’s got to prove it can stretch beyond premium metros without diluting brand or margin.
Be Clinical snags funds to make ‘anti-ageing’ a serious science, not serum fluff. Hemangi Dhir just locked INR 2 Cr to build the lab-backed skincare brand your dermatologist won’t scoff at. Be Clinical is gunning for clinical-grade, age-defying products in a market drowning in K-beauty knockoffs and influencer noise.
📚 Reads & Recos
Thinking of hiring a celeb? Read this before you set your brand budget on fire. Sharrp Ventures and Thriverse just dropped the most tactical, no-fluff playbook on celebrity endorsements we’ve seen. Forget glam, this is founder-grade reality: how much to pay, when sweat equity backfires and how contracts become landmines. Every D2C builder flirting with a celeb collab needs this.
Google's AI Overviews link back to Google 43% of the time, furthering its walled garden effect, according to new data.
The celeb side hustle: A-list celebrities have been using their star power to break into new industries. For the past few years, they’ve flocked to beverages—alcoholic and otherwise. George Clooney, Dwayne Johnson and Ryan Reynolds are just some of the celebs who are looking to take the celeb influence into real, ever since shaken not stirred Martini drinking James Bond influenced drinking.
For those selling the USA, TikTok is inevitable. Here’s, a deep dive into the TikTok algorithm, how it works, and how you can work with it to enhance your visibility and engagement on the platform.
That’s all for this week! Bye!
PS: Folks at some companies have told us this newsletter is almost mandatory weekly reading for their teams 🥰. If your company is not in on it yet, get your teams on the latest in the e-commerce space every week