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Edition #232

The Insight Labs Daily.

Fri · Sep 4 · 2026 ~7 min read
★ Lead Story
1 day ago · 2 min read

A beauty brand that raised Rs 125 crore and reached 20 lakh customers is being wound up

On September 3, co-founder Param Bhargava said The Ayurveda Co and its sister label Khadi Essentials are being formally closed. Both stopped trading in July 2025. The assets have since been sold and the companies are in a winding-up process.

The scale that is being shut is what makes this worth reading. Across the two brands, the business booked about Rs 250 crore of net revenue over seven years, reached 20 lakh customers, and at its peak ran 20 owned stores, 800 beauty-advisor counters, 110 distributors and more than 10,000 retail touchpoints. It employed over 1,000 people on and off the rolls.

The money came in two rounds: $3 million in 2022 led by Wipro Consumer Care Ventures, then a Rs 100 crore Series A in 2023 led by Sixth Sense Ventures. At that raise the plan was a profitable unicorn by FY26 and an IPO by FY28.

Bhargava's own reading of the failure is plain. The brand went into too many channels too quickly and built a senior team before the operating system underneath could support that overhead. The founders went unpaid for over a year and mortgaged family property before stopping.

The question for every D2C beauty brand still scaling is whether its offline network is a distribution asset or a fixed cost that the online business is quietly carrying.

The footprint numbers explain where the money went. Twenty stores and 800 counters need staff, rent and stock whether or not a customer walks in. A Rs 150 crore GMV business spread across 10,000 retail points is thin at every point, so the fixed cost of serving the network rises faster than the revenue it brings. Online D2C brands are built on variable marketing spend; general trade is built on fixed distribution spend, and the two do not switch over easily.

The category itself is not the problem. Ayurveda-led personal care is still a growth segment for large houses that already own distribution. Wipro Consumer's early cheque into TAC and its later purchase of other skincare brands show the strategic appetite. What the closure shows is the ordering: distribution first, then a brand can be layered on; a brand first with distribution bought at venture cost is the expensive route.

Bhargava says he is open to talks about the brand name with anyone who wants to build in Ayurveda. That is the residual value of Rs 125 crore of venture capital: a trademark and a customer list.

Today's Top 5

5 stories
Air India · 1 day ago

Tata Sons has cleared over Rs 10,000 crore for Air India, and put conditions on the next cheque

On September 3, reports said the Tata Sons board has approved in principle an equity infusion of more than Rs 10,000 crore, about $1.1 billion, into Air India. It is among the largest single commitments to the airline since the Rs 18,000 crore purchase in 2021.

The condition attached is new. Air India and other group companies will have to submit a business case each time they ask for capital. Tata Sons had paused equity flows after the airline's losses rose to Rs 22,238 crore in FY26.

Air India had asked its two owners, Tata Sons and Singapore Airlines, for about $1.5 billion of fresh equity, Reuters reported on August 25. The airline and Air India Express together lost $2.33 billion in the year to March, more than double the year before.

The money will probably arrive in instalments, and Singapore Airlines, which owns around 25%, has to match its share for the round to close. That makes the cheque a governance event as much as a funding one: the airline now has to justify spend line by line to a shareholder that has been publicly at odds with the group's controlling trusts over exactly these losses.

For passengers the relevance is the fleet. The retrofit of older wide-body aircraft has run behind schedule, and cabin quality is where Air India loses to Gulf carriers on the long-haul routes it is trying to win back. Capital with conditions tends to slow the discretionary items first.

Simple Energy · 2 days ago

A premium scooter maker has launched a Rs 1.1 lakh family model and wants 10,000 a month

This week Simple Energy launched the Wave, a family electric scooter priced from Rs 1,09,999 ex-showroom, with deliveries from September 25. Four battery options run from 110 km to 243 km of claimed range, with a 70-litre underseat boot and a 90 km/h top speed.

The target is 10,000 units a month in sales and capacity by March 2027, and a retail network of 170 outlets from 90 today. The company expects the Wave range to earn a 20–25% contribution margin over the next twelve months despite the lower price.

Simple's earlier One was a Rs 1.5 lakh-plus performance scooter for a small buyer set. The Wave is a move to the price band where Ola, TVS, Bajaj and Ather already sell most of their volume.

Timing matters. Industry trackers showed most electric two-wheeler brands selling fewer units in August than in July, with TVS holding the top spot. A new entrant at the mass price point is arriving into a month-on-month slowdown, so its first quarter will be judged on whether it takes share rather than rides a rising market.

The 20–25% contribution margin claim is the number to watch. Rivals at this price point have spent years getting there; if Simple holds it while doubling stores, the model works. If the margin is being bought with an introductory price that expires, the 10,000-a-month target moves.

RentoMojo · 1 day ago

A furniture-rental company is going public next week on a profit that a tax credit helped double

RentoMojo filed its red herring prospectus on September 3. The IPO opens on September 9 and closes on September 11, with a Rs 150 crore fresh issue and an offer for sale of up to 2.7 crore shares by early investors and a co-founder.

FY26 operating revenue rose 45.5% to Rs 387 crore. Restated profit after tax rose about 142% to Rs 104.2 crore, of which Rs 36.6 crore was a one-time tax credit. Strip that out and the underlying profit is closer to Rs 68 crore.

The fresh money goes to offline expansion, new warehouses and debt repayment across its 22 cities. Rival Furlenco reported the same day that its FY26 profit rose to Rs 59.5 crore on revenue of Rs 370.4 crore, so two rental businesses of similar size have now turned properly profitable in the same year.

Rental furniture is a subscription business with a hard asset underneath, so the economics turn on how many months a sofa earns before it is retired. Both companies growing revenue above 45% while EBITDA margins widen suggests utilisation, not price, is doing the work; that is the healthier version of this model.

There is a legal overhang: a former co-founder has filed a suit over disputed share transfers seeking to halt the issue. The dates are set regardless, but investors reading the profit line should also read that paragraph of the prospectus.

Cars24 · 1 day ago

Cars24 sold 18% less and lost 19% less, and its cash pile halved

Cars24's FY26 filings, reported on September 3, show operating revenue down 18.3% to Rs 5,091.7 crore from Rs 6,233.2 crore. Net loss narrowed 18.7% to Rs 441.1 crore.

The decline is in car sales: product revenue fell 22.7% to Rs 4,438.8 crore. Service revenue more than doubled to Rs 205.6 crore, which is the business the company wants to be judged on, but it is still 4% of the total.

Cash and equivalents fell to Rs 377.1 crore at end-March from Rs 860.8 crore, while borrowings rose about 17% to Rs 958.6 crore. Employee costs rose 33% to Rs 806 crore in a year revenue shrank.

The used-car marketplace model has a simple tension: owning inventory drives revenue but eats cash; going asset-light protects cash but the top line shrinks. Cars24's FY26 is the second straight year of choosing the latter, and the loss is coming down slower than the revenue.

The number that changes the story is the service line. Financing, insurance and maintenance attached to a used car carry far better margins than the car itself. At Rs 205 crore it is growing fast, but it needs to be several times larger before it covers a Rs 800 crore wage bill.

slice · 1 day ago

A fintech that was worth $1.2 billion is raising money at $450 million

Reports on September 3 said slice, the former card startup that now runs a small finance bank, is close to raising about $100 million at a valuation of $450–465 million. That is a cut of roughly 62% from the $1.2 billion of its last round.

Neo Group, Japan's Kado Global and existing investor Moore Strategic Ventures are expected to take part, and the round may include a secondary sale.

slice's original business was prepaid cards for young consumers; a 2022 regulatory change ended that model. It bought North East Small Finance Bank and now offers deposits, loans and payments.

A down round of this size is a repricing of a category, not just one company. A consumer credit app is valued on growth and distribution; a bank is valued on capital, book quality and returns on equity. Moving from one to the other means being marked against bank multiples, which are lower.

For the consumer, a funded bank with Rs 800-odd crore of new capital is a more stable lender than an app on a borrowed licence. The investors who came in at $1.2 billion are the ones paying for that stability.

⚡ 30-Second Scan

Services activity picked up in August: the HSBC India services PMI rose to 54.1 from 53.3, with hiring at a 15-month high, even as factory orders grew at their weakest pace in five years.
FSSAI ordered 3.7 tonnes of expired infant food destroyed at Bengaluru-based British LifeSciences, maker of the Optilait and Nascent formula brands, and seized mislabelled products; no illness was reported.
Alpha Wave sold almost its entire Pine Labs stake in a Rs 550 crore block deal at Rs 155.10 a share, continuing its year-long sell-down of Indian tech holdings after Delhivery, Aye Finance and part of Lenskart.

Sourced from public reporting; analysis by The Insight Labs.

Sources: YourStory, Inc42, Economic Times, Reuters, Autocar India, SEBI RHP, MCA filings.

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