
New players in UPI sweepstakes; Urban Company's IPO papers
Also in the letter:
In fierce UPI fight, new players Flipkart-backed Super.Money, Navi, Cred start to gain ground
Driving the news:
How they're doing it:
A broader financial services play beyond payments, with fintechs willing to subsidise UPI losses to cross-sell credit and bill payment services.
Large incumbents like PhonePe, Google Pay, and Paytm have scaled back cashback offers, giving new entrants room to grow.
Rising UPI volumes during the IPL season, fuelled by gaming and betting transactions.
Big picture:
Yes, but:
Setting target:
Also Read:
Urban Company files DRHP for Rs 1,900-crore IPO
Key details:
Rs 429 crore via fresh issue; Rs 1,471 crore via secondary share sale by investors including Accel, Elevation, Tiger Global, and Vy Capital.
Founders Abhiraj Singh Bhal, Varun Khaitan, and Raghav Chandra will not sell shares.
Use of funds:
Financials:
Ather Energy's IPO sees 16% subscription on first day
By the numbers:
86 lakh shares bid against 5.34 crore on offer.
RII (retail) portion subscribed 63%.
NII (non-institutional) portion subscribed 16%.
Background:
Electronics parts PLI draws in Dixon, Tatas, Foxconn and others
Details:
Tata Electronics is targeting the enclosures segment; Dixon aims to apply for multiple categories including display and camera modules.
Foxconn is exploring smartphone display module assembly.
Startups step in, too:
Other Top Stories By Our Reporters
Dailyhunt parent VerSe's internal controls inadequate, says Deloitte audit:
IPO-bound Meesho to change Indian parent entity's name from Fashnear Technologies:
YouTube appoints Gunjan Soni as new India managing director:
Global Picks We Are Reading
Happy Tuesday! In the longstanding UPI battle, fresh players are giving incumbents a tough fight. This and more in today's ETtech Morning Dispatch.■ New PLI draws interest■ Deloitte's Dailyhunt red flags■ Meesho's pre-IPO refreshNew-generation UPI apps such as Navi, Cred, Bhim, and Super.Money have been quietly gaining market share over the last six months, aggressively using cashbacks and incentives to carve out a slice of the growing digital payments market.NPCI data shows that these smaller apps have collectively nearly doubled their market share. While their overall percentage remains modest, the absolute gains in user numbers are significant.PhonePe and Google Pay still dominate UPI, controlling over 80% of all transactions. But the NPCI is pushing smaller players to break this duopoly.UPI remains non-remunerative and largely commoditised. Few fintechs may have the appetite to continue burning cash indefinitely to capture share.Finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Monday underlined a target of one billion UPI transactions per day within 2–3 years and emphasised accelerating UPI's internationalisation through interoperable frameworks and wider global acceptance.Abhiraj Singh Bhal, CEO, Urban CompanyAt-home services platform Urban Company has filed draft IPO papers for a Rs 1,900-crore offering, trimming the size from the Rs 3,000 crore planned earlier.Urban Company plans to allocate Rs 190 crore towards tech development and cloud infrastructure, with the rest going towards office leases and marketing.The company posted Rs 846 crore in operating revenue in the first nine months of FY25, up 41% year-on-year, and reported a net profit of Rs 242 crore.Tarun Mehta, founder, Ather EnergyElectric two-wheeler maker Ather Energy opened its IPO on April 28 , garnering a 16% subscription on the first day.Ather's Rs 2,981-crore issue , priced at Rs 304-321 per share, is the first mainboard IPO of FY26. The offer closes on April 30.Major firms including Dixon Technologies, Tata Electronics, and Foxconn plan to invest under the new electronics components PLI scheme.Contract manufacturer Zetwerk is actively scouting partnerships across multiple categories, its electronics president Josh Foulger said.L-R, Umang Bedi and Virendra Gupta, founders, DailyhuntVerSe Innovation's auditor, Deloitte, has flagged issues in the internal controls of the parent of Dailyhunt and Josh for the financial year ended March 31, 2024, stating that these "material weaknesses" could potentially lead to misstatement in accounting aspects including operating expenses, trade payables and expense account balances.IPO-bound ecommerce firm Meesho's board has approved changing the name of its Indian entity, Fashnear Technologies Pvt Ltd, to Meesho Pvt Ltd, according to regulatory filings made with the Registrar of Companies.YouTube said on Monday that it had appointed Gunjan Soni as the country's managing director. The US-based video platform said Soni, who brings over two decades of leadership experience spanning business, technology, marketing and ecommerce, will lead YouTube's growth and innovation efforts in India.■ Poop drones are keeping sewers running so humans don't have to ( Wired ■ Why Trump can't build iPhones in the US ( FT ■ China's chipmakers are catching up to Nvidia and TSMC. Here's how they compare ( Rest of World
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Hans India
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The Hindu
12 minutes ago
- The Hindu
What happened to the crypto exchange CoinDCX?
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CoinDCX reported financial exposure of about $44 million but stressed that the incident was contained by isolating the affected account, which was segregated from the company's customer wallets. The exchange further added that the exposure was limited to that amount alone and that it would be fully absorbed by CoinDCX through its own reserves. 'The incident has been formally reported to CERT-In, and we are actively working with leading blockchain forensics firms and ecosystem partners to trace the attacker and recover assets,' said CoinDCX in its Incident Report, and provided information about the cross-chain movement of the stolen assets. The company also announced a recovery bounty programme. How were CoinDCX users impacted by the hack? CoinDCX repeatedly stressed that customers' funds were secure and unaffected by the hack, as they were placed in segregated, cold wallets that are challenging for attackers to breach. The company also stated that trading, rupee deposits, and rupee withdrawals remained fully functional throughout the period. However, some customers complained that their withdrawal requests took time to be processed, sparking fears that their funds had been frozen. CoinDCX's founding partner Mridul Gupta said that 'operational challenges caused by high withdrawal volumes during non-banking hours' had led to some delays but denied allegations of a freeze. The company later confirmed that all withdrawal requests had been successfully processed. While crypto withdrawals are not possible for everyone using CoinDCX, this is a pre-existing situation that is part of the company's risk policy and was not caused by the hack itself. Furthermore, the exchange faced accusations of a 17-hour-long delay when it came to updating customers about the hack. CoinDCX defended its actions and said it needed to have all the information before issuing a statement to customers but said investigating agencies were immediately informed and onboarded. 'Our first priority is always to act, not just to speak. Before making a public statement, we had to ensure the threat was fully contained, our platform was secure, and all customer funds were safe. Communicating with incomplete or unverified information would have been irresponsible and could have caused unnecessary panic,' said co-founder Sumit Gupta. Other CoinDCX users raised complaints about temporary price drops for certain assets, as well as some tokens being under maintenance, which the company also addressed. How are the CoinDCX and WazirX hacks different? Just a little over a year ago, on July 18, 2024, WazirX was targeted by North Korean cyber-thieves. That day, a multi-signature wallet that the WazirX exchange was managing with the company Liminal was exploited, leading to the loss of assets worth over $230 million. This was far greater than the losses reported by CoinDCX; WazirX customers' assets were directly affected by this breach. After much delay and confusion, WazirX blocked users' access to their crypto for an indefinite period of time and acknowledged significant losses. By contrast, CoinDCX has stressed that it is business as usual for the exchange, noting on X that its annual revenue exceeds ₹1,100 crores. WazirX customers demanded that the company use its own profits or funds to cover losses, but the company said this was not possible, citing an ownership dispute with the international crypto exchange Binance. WazirX further decided to carry out its legal restructuring exercise in Singapore. WazirX users have not been able to access their locked up crypto for over a year and are set to vote for a second time on the amended Scheme of Arrangement. This comes after the first proposed restructuring plan was rejected by the Singapore High Court. Both WazirX and CoinDCX were hit with criticism for delays in informing their customers about their respective hacks. What is the lesson for crypto investors in India? Investors in India should remember that crypto trading is a largely unregulated activity in the country; even users of centralised, FIU-registered exchanges can expect little to no support from the Indian authorities in case of a crisis such as a security breach. Satnam Narang, Senior Staff Research Engineer at Tenable, explained that if users want full control of their coins, they should consider self-custody options like an offline, hardware cold wallet they directly control. Even here, due diligence is required in order to buy only trusted hardware wallets from legitimate sellers, according to him. 'As more and more exchanges have been set up across the world, we have seen reports of attacks targeting smart contract flaws or other ways to steal funds from these exchanges including but not limited to social engineering, theft of credentials or private keys or targeting a third-party company that works with the targeted organization,' said Mr. Narang, noting that the CoinDCX hack was one of the largest cryptocurrency breaches since the attack against WazirX last year. He highlighted that when crypto prices go up, there is also a rise in attacks against both exchanges and customers. Mr. Narang said that traders storing coins on crypto exchanges should use multi-factor authentication and strong passwords, or store their coins securely offline, if possible. 'There is an old adage in the cryptocurrency space that says: 'not your keys, not your crypto/coins'. As long as users store their cryptocurrency on an exchange, those coins don't necessarily belong to them because the exchange could ban their account or an exchange hack could lead to the loss of coins,' explained Mr. Narang.