Dealshare Raises $165 Million In Fresh Round Of Financing, Valuing The Company At $1.6Bn+

* DealShare announces the first close of its Series E funding from marquee investors Tiger Global, Alpha Wave Global, Dragoneer Investments Group, Kora Capital and Unilever Ventures as part of a wider financing round

* Annual Revenue Run Rate crosses $600m

* Total customer base at more than 10 million

3-year-old social e-commerce start-up DealShare today announced that it has raised $165 million in the first close of its Series E fund raise. The Company welcomed Dragoneer Investments Group, Kora Capital and Unilever Ventures, along with continued commitments from existing investors Tiger Global and Alpha Wave Global (Falcon Edge).

The company has been growing its consumer and revenue base strongly and expects to hit $1bn revenues in the near term. The funds raised in this round will be utilized to invest in technology and data science, as well as a ten-fold expansion in its logistics infrastructure and to increase geographic reach. In addition, it will establish a sizable offline store franchise network. 

DealShare has built a new disruptive retail model for India focusing on affordability for mass consumers. It offers high-quality, low-priced essentials coupled with a gamified, fun-filled, and virality-driven shopping experience, making it easy for first-time internet users to experience online shopping. 

Commenting on the latest funding round, Vineet Rao, Founder & CEO of DealShare, said: "DealShare is one of the fastest growing e-commerce companies in India. Our revenues and customer base have grown 13 times in the last year with improving profitability. With a strong customer base of over 10 million, we have expanded our geographical presence to over 100 cities across 10 states. Our company has created job opportunities for over 5,000 persons across the country.”

“We have created a network of over 1,000 community leaders under our flagship program DealShare Dost enabling an efficient and highly scalable supply chain. We will be utilizing the proceeds from the round to invest heavily into technology, improving the supply chain and expanding our footprint throughout the country. We will also invest in acquiring best-in-class technologies and marquee brands that are focused on the mass market”, Rao added.

Griffin Schroeder, Partner, Tiger Global said “DealShare is growing rapidly and has built an impressive customer base with a strong leadership team executing on its innovative social commerce strategy. As it expands into Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities, DealShare is well positioned to power a new wave of e-commerce growth in India.”

Sharing his vision for the company's growth trajectory, Sourjyendu Medda, Founder, Chief Business Officer, DealShare, said: "We are witnessing very high growth in our business. This year, we will be expanding our presence to well over 200 cities across 20 states and are setting an audacious goal to increase our annual revenue run rate to $3 billion while becoming operationally profitable. We also aim to add close to 50 million new consumers in the next 12 months.”

“Our mission is to increase affordability and accessibility of high-quality products at low prices for mass consumers. We have created a unique network of more than 1000 small and medium manufacturers in the grocery and essential space which allow us to enable our mission. Majority of our consumers are first to e-commerce because of us. Not only are we spearheading e-commerce adoption in the country but we are also doing that with ‘Atmanirbhar Bharat’ as the key focus.”, Sourjyendu Medda added.

DealShare operates over 100 warehouses in the 10 states it operates in, and plans to expand its warehousing from 2 million square feet today to 20 million square feet over the next 12 months.

Navroz D. Udwadia, Co-Founder and Partner, Alpha Wave Global, added “We are pleased to invest in this round and continue our support of Dealshare. DealShare delivers a compelling value proposition to its customers, who are value-conscious middle Indians in Tier 2 and 3 cities who crave local / regional products.“

Founded by Vineet Rao, Sourjyendu Medda, Sankar Bora, and Rajat Shikhar in 2018, DealShare provides a sharp and curated assortment at highly competitive prices and has built an innovative community leader driven ultra-low-cost delivery mechanism collectively leading to best-in-class unit economics. DealShare has boosted its senior leadership by recruiting top industry leaders with deep experience in retail and consumer technology.

Avendus was the exclusive financial advisor to the transaction.

About DealShare:

DealShare is a disruptive e-commerce model built towards re-inventing e-retail for the next billion internet users. Currently, DealShare is present in 100+ cities across 10 states and it plans to expand to 200+ cities across 20 states in 2022. The company has acquired more than 10 million consumers and adds lacs of new consumers every month. DealShare caters to about 4 lakh orders daily. Since its inception, company’s focus has been to procure products from local manufacturers and provide them with a platform to digitize their business and scale their local brands. At present, DealShare has partnered with over 1,000 local and regional brands and sources its products directly from the manufacturers. For more information, visit: https://www.dealshare.in

MAHE Establish Hebri Beedu Dr Aravinda Ballal Endowment

The President of MAHE Trust & Chairman of MEMG, Bengaluru – Dr Ranjan R Pai, inaugurated the Memorial Trust in remembrance of Dr Aravinda Ballal.

Dr H S Ballal, Pro-Chancellor, MAHE ,  Lt Gen (Dr.) MD Venkatesh, Vice-Chancellor, MAHE, Dr M V Prabhu, Pro Vice-Chancellor, MAHE, Dr PLNG Rao, Pro Vice-Chancellor, MAHE, Dr Dilp Naik, Pro Vice-Chancellor, MAHE Dr Narayana Sabhahit- Registrar MAHE, and other  officials of MAHE, were present to commemorate the occasion.

Aravinda Ballal was born in 24.10.1935 to Sri Hebri Beedu Amba Ballal and Sri Belanje Krishnayya Hegde couple. He completed his primary and secondary education at Christian High School, Udupi and intermediate studies at MGM College, Udupi. He had his  MBBS  with Post graduation  in Medicine  at KMC, Manipal and Mangaluru.

He began his career as Medical Officer at Wenlock Hospital, Mangaluru. He was giving very good services to patients under the guidance of Dr K R Shetty and Dr B M Hegde, the stalwarts in the field of medicine.

In the year 1979, he joined the Department of Medicine, KMC, Mangaluru as Assistant Professor and worked with Dr A Prabhakar Rao, Head of the Department of Medicine.  After rendering two decades of services, he retired in 1996 as Professor. He had earned the respect of hundreds of students with his outstanding pedagogy. Then he served as Professor at Yenepoya Medical College from 1999-2013.

When he suffered a paralytic stroke in 2020, his nephew, Dr HS Ballal, Pro Chancellor, MAHE ensured all necessary facilities for him.  He was provided with best healthcare services by his grandniece, Dr Meenakshi A Shetty and Dr M Chakrapani during this period.

Dr Aravinda Ballal who was a bachelor, died on 14.04.2021.  Dr H S Ballal conducted his post mortal rituals.    Dr Aravinda Ballal donated his entire savings and assets to KMC, which had provided him education, the career of 20 years , and best healthcare services during his illness.  It was the earnest desire of Dr Aravinda Ballal that, his entire savings and assets should be pooled and an endowment fund should be created.  Dr Aravinda Ballal was providing best healthcare services for the downtrodden people.

Dr Divakar Shetty, retired anesthesiologist, KMC, who had served Dr Ballal contributed  ?63 lakhs.   His favourite disciple Dr MV Prabhu, Pro Vice Chancellor, MAHE contributed   ?10 lakhs,  his nephew Dr Sudheerchandra Ballal, Dentist in Udupi contributed 2 lakhs, thus totally amounting to Rs.75 lakhs.  MAHE is donating a matching grant of Rs. 75 lakhs to this Endowment, that is being set up with a capital of ? 1.5 crore for the purpose of rendering financial assistance to the needy and senior citizen patients.  

Dr H S Ballal, Pro Chancellor, MAHE, Dr M V Prabhu, Pro Vice Chancellor, MAHE, and Dr Prakash Harishchandra, Associate Professor, Department of Medicine, Kasturba Medical College, Mangalore have put their heart and soul into making this Endowment to fulfil the wishes of Dr Aravinda Ballal. 

AU Bank Deliver Strong Performance With Q3’FY22 PAT Of Rs 302 Cr

The Board of Directors of AU Small Finance Bank Limited at its meeting held today, approved the financial results for the quarter and nine months ended December 31, 2021. 

Executive Summary 

A significant improvement in the overall business environment resulted in strong disbursements for AU Bank. In Q3FY22, fund-based disbursements were up 33% YoY at Rs 8,152 Crore as compared to ? 6,115 Crore in the same quarter of the previous year. Disbursements included ECLGS of ? 48 Crore in Q3FY22. Non-fund disbursements for Q3FY22 were up 55% YoY at ? 627 Crore as compared to ? 405 Crore in the same quarter of the previous year. 

Deposits grew 49% YoY to ? 44,278 Crore from ? 29,708 Crore, with further improvement in CASA ratio to 39% compared to 22% a year ago. The Bank witnessed a growth of 33% YoY in its gross advances to ? 40,719 Crore from ? 30,523 Crore. This was coupled with consistent collection efficiency in excess of 100% for every month of the quarter, resulting in an improvement in asset quality ratios. Bank maintains a strong position in Digital services with properties like AU 0101, Video Banking, Credit cards, UPI QR etc. all of which continue to see strong momentum. 

Financial Highlights 

Q3’FY22 financial results  

Net profit for the quarter rose to ? 302 Crore  

Net Interest Margin (NIM) at 6.3%  

ROA stood at 2.2% and ROE at 17.4%  

Average cost of funds reduced to 5.9% from 6.7% in the same quarter last year   

Asset quality  

Bank’s Asset quality continued to improve significantly with GNPA at 2.6% as against 3.2% in the previous quarter  

Net NPA stood at 1.3% of net advances against 1.7% in the previous quarter  

Collection efficiency averaged 106% as compared to 97% last year for the same period 

Bank has, additionally, maintained contingency provision buffer of ? 300 Crore (75 bps of advances) over and above provisions for GNPA, Restructured book and standard provisions 

Capital Adequacy 

Bank remains well capitalized with a strong Tier-I capital ratio of 18.2% and total CRAR of 19.5% which is sufficiently above minimum requirement of 7.5% and 15% respectively Including profits for 9MFY22, the CRAR ratio is 22.0% and Tier I ratio is at 20.7% 

Nine-month ended December 31st, 2021 

Bank’s total balance sheet grew by 26% YoY to ? 58,645 Crore 

Total income stood at ? 4,937 Crore   

For 9MFY22, net revenue (net interest income plus other income) was at ? 2,980 Crore and Net profit was at ? 784 Crore   

Growth in digital & payments platform 

The Bank’s digital properties like AU 0101, Video Banking, Credit cards, UPI QR etc. continue to see strong momentum 

The Bank has issued 1 Lac+ Credit cards and installed 3 Lac+ QR codes till now 

Of the total credit card issued, over 53% of customers are first time users in more than 150 districts of the country since launch 

Video Banking experience has been quite encouraging in terms of enhancing reach, acquisition and engagement 

31 % Savings Account opened digitally through AU 0101 and Video Banking during the quarter 

Key Business Updates 

Continuing its effort to broad-base and strengthen its Board, AU Small Finance Bank, appointed Shri Harun Rashid Khan, ex-Deputy Governor of RBI as Non-Executive Independent Director (Additional Director) on the Board, for a period of three years, effective 28th December 2021, subject to the approval of Shareholders 

The Bank has expanded its presence to 69 new touchpoints in the form of Asset Centres, Bank Branches, Bank Outlet (BO) and Smart BC and its network is spread across 880 touchpoints as on December 31, 2021 

CRISIL has upgraded its rating outlook on long-term debt and fixed deposit program of the bank to ‘Positive’ from ‘Stable’ reflecting strength in asset quality, granularity in liabilities and the overall banking franchise; Long term rating at ‘CRISIL AA-/Positive’ and FD rating at ‘CRISIL AA+/Positive' 

AU Bank constituted its Diversity and Inclusion (D&I) committee during the quarter to increase emphasis on D&I within the bank with a mandate to make AU Bank a more inclusive workplace 

AU Bank was certified as a ‘Great Place To Work’ for the second consecutive year 

The third quarter being the festive season, AU Bank announced a host of features and benefits for its NRI customers and had also launched AU Shopping Dhamaka with offers across 500+ brands 

Commenting on the performance, Mr. Sanjay Agarwal, MD & CEO, AU Small Finance Bank said, "In Q3'FY22, we saw continued improvement in the operating environment and borrower cashflows. These factors along with the secured nature of our loan book led to significant asset quality improvement in the quarter, along with continued improvement across all other key focus areas. These include improving granularity of our deposit base, healthy asset growth driven by small-ticket secured loans, increasing adoption of our digital properties following the launch of our super app AU 0101, QR codes and credit card offerings, and improved visibility and brand recall following our brand campaign. Our confidence in our borrower base, power of the banking platform, and our own business model of small-ticket secure lending has been reinforced. Given our strong lending model, increasing granularity of deposits, growing reach and our evolving digital properties, I feel we are well positioned to take advantage of the significant opportunities in the segments we are present in. Nonetheless, we remain cautiously optimistic in our approach as the situation around the pandemic remains fluid”.  

Toyota Glanza And Urban Cruiser Clock Cumulative Wholesales Of Over 1 lakh Units

* Both the models help TKM tap 66% first time buyers especially in Tier II & III markets in India  

True to its belief of delivering “Mass Happiness to All”, Toyota Kirloskar Motor witnessed a significant new milestone with the Toyota Glanza and the Urban Cruiser, together clocking cumulative wholesales of over 1 lakh units. Launched in June 2019 and September 2020 respectively, both the Glanza and the Urban Cruiser have received a phenomenal response from the customers, with the Glanza clocking over 65,000 units and the Urban Cruiser registering cumulative wholesales of more than 35,000 units.

Ever since its launch, the Glanza and the Urban Cruiser have played a significant role in catering to 66% of first-time Toyota buyers, especially in Tier II & III markets. This has also helped TKM garner young-millennial customers who are not only seeking exceptional automobile ownership experience, but also the best balance of economically viable options. Furthermore, customers have also availed comprehensive “Best in Class” ownership experience, through the specially designed value-added service programs such as Express Maintenance 60 (EM60), Q Service, Extended Warranty & Service Packages (SMILES).

Commenting on the success of Glanza and Urban Cruiser, Mr. Atul Sood, Associate Vice President, Sales, and Strategic Marketing, TKM, said, “Toyota takes great pride in its unrelenting efforts to ensure the highest customer satisfaction, and this milestone is a testament to the best ownership experience, exceptional sales & after sales services, as well as peace of mind that is offered to every single Toyota customer. The Glanza and the Urban Cruiser have witnessed phenomenal success over the years, with the Glanza registering more than 25% growth when compared to its sales in 2020. Thanks to both these models that have helped us strike a defined balance to reach young aspiring customers, who desire to own a Toyota early in their lives.

The success of Glanza and Urban Cruiser reiterates our belief that a good purchase experience is not just about the product, but about the entire ownership process.  Our focus on expanding footprints covering the tier II and tier III markets, has enhanced TKM product accessibility and service coverage to a wider and newer set of customer base. At present we are operational across 418 dealer outlets in the country. Furthermore, our virtual showroom has simplified the process of car buying by digitizing and integrating the key touchpoints in a customer’s purchase cycle, as a one-stop-shop solution. We thank our customers for their patronage, and we will continue to strive towards our commitment to providing an awesome experience,” he concluded.

An array of attractive offers, low cost of ownership, extended warranty, and customized finance schemes have helped Toyota maintain the sales momentum of the Toyota Glanza and the Urban Cruiser. Over the years, in addition to Toyota Finance Services (TFS), the company has partnered with several financial institutions to enable easy finance options at competitive interest rates for customers across a vast number of cities and towns in India. Similarly, through Toyota U Trust, upgraders and additional car buyers can avail one stop solution for reliable, transparent and easy buying & selling of used cars.

Happiest Minds Delivers Industry-Leading Y-O-Y Revenue Growth Of 47.2 Percent

 * Continues strong profitability performance with EBITDA of Rs 76 Crores, showing a y-o-y growth of 27.8%

Happiest Minds Technologies Limited (NSE:HAPPSTMNDS), a ‘Born Digital. Born Agile’, digital transformation and IT solutions company, today announced its consolidated results for the third quarter ended December 31, 2021 as approved by its Board of Directors.

Joseph Anantharaju, Executive Vice Chairman said, “Our compelling offerings have made us the partner of choice for our customers in their Experience, Data and Cloud initiatives. The stellar results validate the value proposition that we offer our customers and the critical role we play in their strategic digital initiatives.”

Venkatraman N, MD & CFO said, “We continue to deliver all-around healthy financial and business performance. Revenue growth of 47.2%, EBIDTA at 26.1%, robust cash generation and healthy capital return ratios are testimony to this. Coupled with onboarding talent and healthy utilization levels, we are well-positioned to address the strong demand environment for Digital services.”

Ram Mohan C, CEO - IMSS and Member of the Executive Board said, “Our customers trust us to migrate, deploy, develop, and manage applications at scale and to ring-fence the digital ecosystem with multi-cloud implementation and management services using next-gen cloud and security tools.“

Financial highlights for

Quarter ended December 31, 2021

Operating Revenues in US$ terms stood at $37.8 million (growth of 5.5% q-o-q; 44.2% y-o-y)

Total Income of Rs 29,228 lakhs (growth of 6.6% q-o-q; 45.2% y-o-y)

EBITDA of Rs 7,631 lakhs, 26.1% of Total Income (growth of 8.8% q-o-q; 27.8% y-o-y)

PAT of Rs 4,892 lakhs (growth of 10.1% q-o-q; 16.1% y-o-y)

Free cash flows of Rs 7,585 lakhs

EPS (diluted) for the quarter of Rs 3.38 (growth of 10.5% q-o-q; 17.0% y-o-y)

Nine Months ended December 31, 2021

Operating Revenues in US$ terms stood at $106.7 million (growth of 43.6% y-o-y)

Total Income of Rs 82,027 lakhs (growth 42.8% y-o-y)

EBITDA of Rs 21,258 lakhs, 25.9% of Total Income (growth of 35.5% y-o-y)

PAT of Rs 12,909 lakhs (growth of 2.1% y-o-y)

Free cash flows of Rs  20,897 lakhs

EPS (diluted) for half year Rs 8.92 (decline of 0.3% y-o-y)

RoCE & RoE (nine months annualized) of 32.9% and 28.2% respectively

Our Business:

Clients:

195 as of December 31, 2021

11 additions in the quarter

Our People - Happiest Minds:

4,021 Happiest Minds as of December 31, 2021 (net addition for the quarter 225, nine-months 793)

Trailing 12 months attrition of 21.1%

Utilization of 81.0%, from 79.7% in last quarter

Key Project Wins:

For a global telecoms provider with operations in 200+ countries, Happiest Minds has won a multi- year, multi-million-dollar managed service contract to partner on their transformational and operational excellence journey

For a global EduTech SaaS company, Happiest Minds has won a multi-year, multi-million-dollar deal to provide End to End Infrastructure and Security Services by leveraging Microsoft Azure

For one of the world’s largest Transportation Mobility-as-a-Service Company, Happiest minds has been chosen to help them on their Governance, Risk and Compliance (GRC) security services

For a global enterprise SaaS company offering cloud-based directory as a service platform, Happiest Minds was chosen as their engineering partner

For a portfolio company of a large private equity firm, Happiest Minds is managing data quality and governance for its master data management (MDM) application hosted on Pimcore platform

For a global bank in business over 100 years, Happiest Minds is partnering them in their automation journey

For a global energy management technology company that manufactures software-driven solar energy solutions, Happiest Minds was chosen to develop the next generation, software-controlled Power Controller

For the US subsidiary of a multinational electronics corporation, Happiest Minds was chosen as their analytics and DevOps partner

Analyst Mentions:

Happiest Minds’ Digital Content Monetization (DCM) solution was featured in NASSCOM Cloud Case

study Compendium

Happiest Minds is recognized in Zinnov Zones as a

Leader for Enterprise Software

Leader for ER&D (Small & Medium Service Providers)

Niche-Established for AI Engineering

Niche-Established for IoT Services

Awards:

Happiest Minds is ranked among India’s Top 25 Best Workplaces in IT & IT-BPM 2021 by Great Place to Work® Institute

Happiest Minds wins Platinum and Gold Awards for its 2021 Annual Report from League of American Communication Professionals (LACP) - Annual Report is ranked #24 globally and #1 in India

Happiest Minds is recognized as a GOLD partner of the Intel Network Builders Winners' Circle

Priya Kanduri, Vice President & CTO - IMSS received the Women in Tech award at the 19th Edition of Asia Pacific HRM Congress & Awards

Preeti Menon, Senior Vice President & Global Delivery Head – PES is recognized among the Top 20 Female Cloud Leaders in 2021 by The Sociable

Kiran Veigas, General Manager – Corporate Marketing & Communications was awarded DMA Trailblazer Rising Star CMO 2021 award at the BrandMaster Award Nite.

PhonePe Pulse Unveils Digital Payment Trends For Q4 2021

* Merchant payments register a 37% QoQ growth hitting 3.15 Billion transactions

* Maharashtra becomes the first state to cross 1 Billion transactions in any given quarter

PhonePe, India’s leading fintech platform, today announced key digital payment trends from PhonePe Pulse Q4 (October - December) 2021. The latest report shows the tremendous pace at which the country is adopting digital payments.

The key highlights of this quarter were:

* The PhonePe platform drove a cumulative 6.63 Billion transactions in Q4, a 26% QoQ jump.

* The Total Payments Value (TPV) of transactions processed grew 26% QoQ to $155 Billion, mirroring the growth in the number of transactions.

* Money transfers with UPI and merchant payments continued to register massive growth reaching 2.72 Billion and 3.15 Billion respectively.

* 25 Million merchants were digitized across 15,700 towns and villages in India, which continued to help offline merchant payments register tremendous growth

Further, the trend of digital payments becoming a Pan-India habit which was observed in Q3, continued in Q4 as well with 722 out of 726 districts in the country clocking positive growth in the number of registered users and digital transactions.

Geographically, Goa (71%), Andaman (41%), Assam (37%) were the top 3 states and union territories in terms of QoQ transaction growth. Maharashtra registered 27% growth and became the first state to cross a billion transactions in a quarter (1.01 billion txns). Karnataka was a close second showing 24% QoQ growth and driving 932 million transactions.

Speaking on the release of the Q4 2021 Pulse insights, Karthik Raghupathy, Head of Strategy and Investor Relations at PhonePe said, “As predicted in our Q3 report, we saw the merchant transactions register robust QoQ growth driven by the holiday season, festivities and multiple e-commerce shopping sales. The data and insights from Pulse clearly indicate that the fundamental shift we are seeing in consumer behavior towards contactless payments is here to stay. As digital payments become an ingrained habit for both customers and merchants, we expect to continue seeing a surge in volumes across use cases for Q1 2022 as well. We are excited to see what interesting insights and trends the next quarter will unveil.”

Launched in September 2021, PhonePe Pulse is India’s first interactive website with data, insights and trends on digital payments in the country. The PhonePe Pulse website showcases more than 2000+ Cr transactions by consumers on an interactive map of India. More details and some interesting fun facts are available on pulse.phonepe.com.  

PNB Q3 Results: Net Profit Spikes 123% YoY To Rs 1,126 Crore, Beats Estimates

State-owned Punjab National Bank on Thursday reported a 123 percent year-on-year (YoY) jump in net profit at Rs 1,126 crore for the third quarter ended December 31, 2021.

In the corresponding quarter last year, the company posted a net profit of Rs 506 crore. CNBC-TV18 Polls had predicted a profit of Rs 1,033.8 crore for the quarter under review.

However, total income during October-December 2021 declined to Rs 22,026.02 crore as against Rs 23,298.53 crore in the year-ago period, PNB said in a regulatory filing.