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FoodTech platform Pluckk raises $ 5 mn seed capital from Exponentia Ventures

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 Fresh produce food-tech venture, PLUCKK (A brand owned by Fruveggiie Tech Pvt limited) has raised $ 5 million seed capital in a funding round, from Exponentia Ventures, a fund focussed on emerging business ideas in both B2C and B2B space.

Founded in 2021, by Pratik Gupta, Pluckk aims to build India’s first digital commerce business to serve the growing demand of lifestyle-oriented fresh produce. The company’s proposition is centered on global food trends ranging from vegan, carb alternatives, gut health, immunity to plant-forward eating to prevent diabetes and mental health.

This round of funding will be utilised towards building the right team, technology, farm to fork infrastructure, customer acquisition and expansion into key metro cities. A part of this fund will also be utilised to acquire Indus Fresh — an existing player in the fresh FnV category serving both B2C and B2B customers like Flipkart, Amazon, Swiggy, Dunzo and Zepto.

Pratik Gupta, CEO and Co-Founder, PLUCKK, said “The biggest consumer revolution we are witnessing today is that consumers not only want to enjoy eating but are also increasingly very careful on what they eat. Pluckk aims to be the brand of choice by providing the widest curated range of such lifestyle-oriented fresh produce. At the core Pluckk will work with farmers through its bespoke win-win program that focuses on farm practices to ensure residue free and traceable produce.”

With this fresh funding, the products and services of PLUCKK will now also be made available to a wider set of consumers in key metro cities such as Bangalore & Mumbai (further expansion plans to Gurugram, Pune, Hyderabad) on its direct-to-consumer (D2C) platform as well as through leading ecommerce platforms under its brand name.

On the firm’s third investment, Alok Gupta, Partner, Exponentia Ventures, said, “Our commitment continues to invest in ideas that connect with the emerging ecosystem. In Pluckk, we find an agile business team with execution focus and leveraging a deep customer insight which can scale to millions of customers.”

The Indian online grocery market size is currently valued at USD 4 billion growing at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 37% and is expected to grow 10X touching USD40 bn in the next 7 years. Of the total grocery market, fruits and vegetables account for 15-20 per cent of the market size, Pluckk aims to gain a higher single-digit share of this market in the next 3-5 years.

Business

Indian telecom industry’s revenue doubled in 5 years, Bharti Airtel biggest gainer

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New Delhi, Dec 25: The revenue of India’s telecom industry increased 8 per cent (quarter-on-quarter) to Rs 674 billion (13 per cent growth year-on-year) in the second quarter of FY25, mainly driven by tariff hikes, according to a new report.

Driven by three rounds of smartphone tariff hikes, India’s quarterly telecom revenue has almost doubled (up 96 per cent) since September 2019, implying 14 per cent five-year industry revenue CAGR, according to the report by Motilal Oswal Financial Services Ltd.

Given the consolidated market structure in the Indian telecom industry, higher data consumption, lower ARPU, and inadequate returns generated by telcos, “we expect tariff hikes to be more frequent. We build in 15 per cent tariff hike in December 2025.”

The telecom industry’s average revenue per unit (ARPU) has almost doubled from Rs 98 in September 2019 to Rs 193 in September 2024, driven by tariff hikes.

However, as a result of sharp tariff hikes, the industry’s subscriber base at 1.15 trillion in September 2024 is lower than September 2019 levels (1.17 trillion).

Among telcos, Bharti Airtel has been the biggest beneficiary of tariff hikes with a 2.2 times increase in implied ARPU, registering a 17 per cent five-year CAGR.

“We believe the significant improvement in the data subs proportion has also been a key driver for Bharti’s industry-leading ARPU,” said the report.

Over the reporting period from 2019-2024, Bharti’s revenue has increased 2.6 times, implying 21 per cent five-year revenue CAGR, with incremental revenue market share significantly higher at 48 per cent.

“With Vi’s (Vodafone Idea) large capex plans, we believe the pace of market share gains may slow down. However, RJio and Bharti are still likely to continue gaining market share at Vi’s expense, in our view,” the report noted.

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AI to generate new revenue streams in 2025, innovate business processes: Experts

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New Delhi, Dec 25: Enterprises will reimagine business processes and value streams with AI agents in 2025, while taking into consideration the practical and ethical challenges, industry experts have said, adding that it will be the year of small language models, scaled reasoning and business value realisation.

In the coming year, AI agents will generate new revenue streams, innovate business processes across industries, boosting profitability, operational efficiency, and customer experience.

“Humans will increasingly take on roles where they set up agentic teams, plan agentic workflows, and validate work done by AI Agents,” said Sandhya Arun, Chief Technology Officer, Wipro.

According to Mohammed Rafee Tarafdar, CTO of Infosys, in 2025, we will see a lot of AI initiatives that are currently under rollout, to be scaled across enterprises, and businesses will start realising some measurable business value along the lines of cost, growth, better experience, and risk protection.

“We are seeing increased investments in scaling inferencing which improves the reasoning capabilities, thereby enabling the agentic systems to be used to eliminate tasks and re-engineer the processes,” Tarafdar mentioned.

As the small language models become more specialised and can deliver higher accuracy at lower cost, the adoption of these models in enterprises is likely to accelerate.

Prativa Mohapatra, Vice President and Managing Director, Adobe India, said that fuelled by a healthy enterprise business, vibrant creator community, and upcoming technological advancements, 2025 represents a year of extraordinary opportunity.

“We are committed to leading the way in harnessing generative AI’s potential responsibly and empower businesses and creators alike, setting new benchmarks in personalised customer experiences and content creation while upholding trust and transparency through our content authenticity programmes,” she noted.

The idea of software-defined capabilities, which originated with cloud technology, has now evolved across various machines like vehicles and robots.

“In 2025, software defined machines will be powered by AI and ML and make informed decisions. We will witness an increase in autonomous machines with over-the-air (OTA) updates,” added Arun.

Autonomous industrial robots will proliferate, and software-defined medical devices will evolve towards autonomous preventive maintenance and self-healing with minimal human intervention and down time.

Augmented analytics will enable citizen users to gain access to intelligent insights from ready-to-use data visualisations for faster and informed decision making. Data marketplaces will grow across industries and industry ecosystems to unlock new revenue streams, said experts.

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Business

Indian firms raise bumper funds from equity market in 2024, set new records

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Mumbai, Dec 24: The year 2024 has been a historic one for the Indian stock market. Corporates raised bumper funds from investors through initial public offerings (IPOs), follow-on public offers (FPOs), qualified institutional placements (QIPs) and rights issues, and set several new records.

In 2024, domestic companies raised Rs 1.64 lakh crore through 90 IPOs.

During this period, shares worth Rs 1.39 lakh crore were sold to institutional investors. This is the highest figure ever for raising capital through public issues.

In 2021, companies raised the highest amount of Rs 1.18 lakh crore through IPOs. During this period, shares worth Rs 41,997 crore were sold by the companies to institutional investors.

So far this year, 20 companies have raised about Rs 18,000 crore through rights issues. Last year this figure was Rs 7,266 crore, and in 2022, it was Rs 3,884 crore.

Due to the boom in the IPO market, in December 2024, about 15 companies are going to raise Rs 25,500 crore through public issues.

The biggest-ever IPO of the Indian stock market was launched by Hyundai Motor India. Its issue size was Rs 27,870 crore.

Earlier, LIC’s public issue of Rs 21,008 crore in 2022 was the biggest IPO in the country so far. In 2024, Vibhor Steel Tube’s IPO received the highest subscription of 320 times. Apart from this, IPOs like KRN Heat Exchanger & Refrigeration, Manba Finance, and Gala Precision Engineering got more than 200 times subscriptions.

Indian firms raised Rs 1.4 lakh crore this year through QIPs, the highest figure so far since 2020.

This year, Vedanta and Zomato have each raised Rs 8,500 crore through QIP. Apart from this, Adani Energy Solutions and Varun Beverage raised Rs 8,373 crore and Rs 7,500 crore, respectively. According to data from the National Securities Depository Ltd (NSDL), foreign investors invested around $14 billion in the primary markets this year, which is more than the previous record of 2021.

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