Hey Yash, as mentioned in the section titled Going against the grain, Curefoods is focusing on aggregators and ignoring the own-app channel, a growth strategy focused on acquisitions vs scaling in-house brands, and retaining founders to work with them.

Gaurav Bagur The Ken, Staff Writer

Thanks for reading the story, Swati. On your first question, when we say payment aggregators "cut ties" with Juspay, it means they are no longer doing certain things that made it feasible for Juspay to offer merchants the option of using these aggregators. One example mentioned in the story is that Razorpay will no longer offer any support to merchants who encounter issues with its payment aggregator while working with Juspay. Another example as told to me by a source is that PAs are able to approve certain server-to-server connections on a per-request basis, and hence they would no longer be approving requests that originate via Juspay. Juspay requires a server-to-server connection with the aggregator in order for the merchant to be able to offer a seamless payment experience. As for your second point, to clarify, even if the payment aggregator supports a certain feature, Juspay needs to work with the payment aggregator in order to incorporate these updates into its platform, dashboards, etc. What we mention in the story is that sources claim Juspay delayed on implementing such updates. I'll take a closer look into how this worked in the specific example of card tokenisation.

Gaurav Bagur The Ken, Staff Writer

Hey Karan, both figures are correct as they are for different periods. VIP made a net profit of Rs 54 crore in FY24 (twelve months ending March 2024), but it has posted a net loss of Rs 46 cr for the twelve months ending September 2024 as per its quarterly filings since then. Hope this clarifies.

Gaurav Bagur The Ken, Staff Writer

Hey Sanchit, one option is to check the country of origin on the product listing when buying from marketplaces like Amazon.

Gaurav Bagur The Ken, Staff Writer

Thanks for your views, Ayush. The second point is something we mentioned in the story as well as a tactic that companies like Samsonite, VIP, and Safari (Urban Jungle) use to cater to different market segments.

Gaurav Bagur The Ken, Staff Writer

Hi Srikanth, you're absolutely right that the lack of 'plug-and-play' venues is a concern for organisers. Currently, in many cases for events like music festivals, the organisers end up renting out mela grounds and fields or even empty warehouses. That also leads to additional cost incurred on the logistics of setting up stages, F&B stalls, etc. And spaces like auditoriums raise issues like lack of control over the technical setup, issues with alcohol sales, and overall offer a less than optimal experience as you mentioned. As a counter example, there is the NMACC in Mumbai which sources told me has enabled a lot of live experiences that are new to Indian audiences. My sense is that the current growth phase of the industry is a fairly recent phenomenon, so now that the market is visibly maturing, we'll start seeing more investment in live entertainment infrastructure to fill this gap and enable more large-scale events. By the way, in an interview published today, Deepinder Goyal talked about this exact problem and raises the possibility of Zomato establishing partnerships where they bear the capex for a venue and in return ask for a certain level of rent-free usage.

Gaurav Bagur The Ken, Staff Writer

Hey Kaustav, as mentioned in the article, these are mostly local brokers who operate within specific cities and have a good understanding of particular neighbourhood level micro-markets. Because of the unorganised and small-scale nature of their business, it's hard to identify many examples, but we've named Realty Corp and Coldwell Banker Value Add in the story as two such firms.

Gaurav Bagur The Ken, Staff Writer

Hey Yash, thanks for sharing your thoughts. We wanted to give a complete sense of what the process of expansion looks like, and including the timelines on which these companies operate is necessary to convey the pace at which that happens.

Gaurav Bagur The Ken, Staff Writer

Thanks for reading the story, Sravan. Bigbasket is much newer to quick commerce, having been focused on its subscription business until very recently. It's well behind Blinkit, Zepto, and Instamart in terms of market share, and we focused primarily on those three major platforms in our reporting for the story. That said, your point is valid that it was a miss to not mention Bigbasket at all. There was no bias intended, but we'll ensure that this kind of oversight doesn't happen again.

Gaurav Bagur The Ken, Staff Writer

Hey Dinesh, thanks for reading. The point being made was that initially, Cars24 viewed financing as a lever to support and boost sales, which is why the company was ok to take on more risk. But as sales flagged, financing became more significant in its own right due to the positive margins, but with this additional focus on the NBFC, bad loans became more of a concern. We haven’t quoted any points on the absolute number of loans being issued. Hope this answers your question.

Gaurav Bagur The Ken, Staff Writer

Thanks for reading the story, Nehal. We have made the arguments based on facts and figures regarding Cars24’s strategic decisions, the quality of its loan portfolio and its partnerships, as well as those shared with us by the company and from the public domain – all of which are laid out in the story. I understand that you are an executive working with Cars24 Financial Services. Please let us know regarding any missing facts or mistaken statements, or any other context we have missed. Happy to correct my understanding.

Gaurav Bagur The Ken, Staff Writer

That's unfortunate! Thanks for sharing, Dhruva.

Gaurav Bagur The Ken, Staff Writer