🔈GlobalBees sees board members exit

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09 May 2025 View in Browser

Hello,   Vedantu, the Bengaluru-based edtech platform focused on K12 education, has reported its strongest quarter to date, turning profitable in Q4 of FY25. The company posted Rs 90 crore in collections in the January-March 2025 quarter, up 67% YoY, and generated over Rs 6 crore in free cash flow.   ICYMI: YourStory was the first to report Vedantu’s phoenix-like recovery.   Meanwhile, Bill Gates is giving away his fortune.   The 69-year-old billionaire Microsoft co-founder has pledged to give away almost his entire personal wealth in the next two decades and said the world’s poorest would receive some $200 billion via his foundation at a time when governments worldwide are slashing international aid, Reuters reports.   Elsewhere, Sir David Attenborough is celebrating his 99th birthday.    To mark the occasion, the veteran broadcaster is speaking out against industrial overfishing in Ocean—a feature-length film.    If the documentary moves you to become a deep-sea explorer, then worry not as there’s a lot left to discover. A new study has found that in all the 67 years humans have been recording deep-sea dives, we have visually explored between 0.0006% and 0.001% of the deep seafloor.    See the line where the sky meets the sea? It calls me. And no one knows how far it goes.   In today’s newsletter, we will talk about  GlobalBees sees board members exit No ifs or cigarette butts Aarti Rana changing the lives of tribal women Here’s your trivia for today: Where did the world's tallest bird, the giant moa, live until it went extinct around 1500?

D2C GlobalBees sees board members exitThree investor board members of GlobalBees, a FirstCry venture—Sudhir Kumar Sethi from Chiratae Ventures, Harsha Kumar from Lightspeed Venture Partners, and Kaveesh Chawla from Premji Invest—have stepped down from the company’s board, multiple people aware of the matter told YourStory.    “Premji and Chiratae are shareholders of FirstCry, and they continue to be part of FirstCry. Their exit is to comply with UPSI rules,” said a person aware of the matter.    Key takeaways: Premji Invest’s Chawla stepped down in September last year, while Chiratae’s Sethi left before the company announced Agarwal’s exit. In July 2021, Kumar and Sethi joined GlobalBees’ board after participating in its $150 million Series A funding round led by FirstCry. FirstCry last month said that GlobalBees CEO Nitin Agarwal quit the roll-up commerce company, citing “personal reasons.” In August last year, GlobalBees CBO Damandeep Soni also left the company and joined AstroTalk in March 2025. Just a month ago, FirstCry approved the infusion of Rs 146 crore into GlobalBees, expecting to close the investment in tranches over 12 months. Know More

Funding Alert PB Healthcare Services: $218M | Seed Footprints Preschool & Daycare: $7.5M | Series A 91Trucks: $5M | Series A

Startup No ifs or cigarette buttsAccording to the National Institute of Cancer Prevention and Research, the environmental burden of tobacco product waste is huge. The waste produced by the packaging of tobacco products in India amounts to over 1,70,000 tonnes per year; of this, waste produced by cigarette consumption is about 40,846 tonnes per year.     Ketan Prajapati wants to tackle this problem with BuffIndia, the B2B waste management company he co-founded in 2018 with Nikhil Mangani to recycle cigarette waste.   Sustainable solutions: While BuffIndia has its footprint in 22 states and 85 cities across India, its primary waste processing site is at its headquarters in Ahmedabad. In March 2025, the company recycled about 32 lakh cigarette butts; it has upcycled 960 kg of microplastic to date. Its flagship product is a fire-proof recycling kiosk for cigarette disposal; this is installed on 1,350 premises, including over 450 major hotels and corporate clients, on an annual rental basis. “We started with investing Rs 1.75 crore in this company. We are raising about Rs 2 crore right now, as we speak. By 2030, we want to have a 15% share of the total market pertaining to cigarette waste management in India and have an annual revenue of Rs 2,500 crore,” Prajapati says. Know More

Inspiration Aarti Rana changing the lives of tribal women There was a time about three decades ago when a Tharu woman in Uttar Pradesh’s Lakhimpur Kheri district would’ve spent her entire lifetime not getting a glimpse of the world outside her village.   Today, however, a Tharu woman in Lakhimpuri Kheri is a matriarch of a new world. Thanks to the vision of handloom weaver and social entrepreneur Aarti Rana, 10,000 Tharu women in 350 self-help groups helm a self-sustaining rural economy of handlooms and traditional crafts.    Lead on: Rana started stitching ghaghra-cholis as a child with her mother, and in 2015, when the National Rural Livelihood Mission programme came to her village, she was among the five women out of 25 people who enrolled in it, despite pushback from her in-laws.  After the programme’s initial success, the district magistrate encouraged the women to form SHGs in their own villages and train others in handloom work. Rana took the lead. She began travelling across her panchayat, reaching out to women and persuading their families to let them participate. Rana’s efforts in promoting self-reliance among tribal women through traditional crafts earned her the Rani Laxmi Bai Bravery Award by the Government of Uttar Pradesh in 2016 and Nari Shakti Puraskar, India's highest civilian award for women, for 2020. Know More

From the CapTable The shifting investing and spending habits of India’s ultra-rich India's ultra-rich landscape is evolving, marked not only by shifts in spending and investing habits but also by a significant transformation in the demographic makeup of the country's Ultra High Net-worth Individuals (UHNIs) in the past few years.    Today, 20-30% of India's UHNIs are younger than 40—a stark change from a decade ago. This is largely fuelled by the booming tech and startup sectors, alongside robust growth in the pharma and chemicals industries, ushering in an all-new generation of the super wealthy.   “We are seeing more younger people making money through their startups today, either via ESOPs (Employee Stock Ownership Programmes) or by exiting their ventures (IPOs or M&As). And these individuals are typically more global in their mindset and slightly more aggressive than the traditional UHNIs,” says Vodhi Chakravartty, head of strategy at Kotak Private Banking. A typical UHNI portfolio in the age bracket of 50-60-plus would have more exposure to equity, debt, and real estate, which are the traditional asset classes. “But in the 30-40 age group, you will see stuff like alternates, global assets, startup investments, NFTs, crypto, other currencies, and a much more diverse range of investments in their portfolios,” he tells The CapTable.   Key Takeaways: Nearly 20-30% of India's UHNIs are under 40, altering the demographic landscape of the ultra-rich. They are more inclined towards alternate assets like gold, unlisted equities, cryptos and NFTs.. There's wealth creation happening in Tier-2 and -3 cities too, where UHNIs are moving away from fixed assets to more diversified financial assets, with gold emerging as their key strategic investment choice. 47% of Indian UHNIs own residential properties abroad, with luxury real estate being lapped up across Dubai, London, and Singapore. ~10% of India's UHNIs are also exploring dual citizenship in countries that offer tax benefits and global mobility. Continue Reading

News & Updates

Exit: Tesla’s India country head has resigned after nine years at the company and ahead of the US EV maker's planned entry into the world’s third-largest car market, Bloomberg News reported. Tesla’s China teams will oversee the Elon Musk-led firm's India operations, with no immediate successor named. Gaming: Nintendo expects to sell 15 million units of its new Switch 2 console in the fiscal year ending March 2026. It is the first forecast for sales from the Japanese gaming giant since it announced the successor to its successful Switch device, which is due to go on sale in June. Sales: Chinese carmaker BYD aims to sell half of its vehicles outside the Chinese market by 2030, a massive increase that would make it a rival to the world's largest automakers. BYD executives have outlined the 2030 target to investors in small groups since late last year, emphasising its Europe expansion as pivotal to hitting the target.

Did you know?

Where did the world's tallest bird, the giant moa, live until it went extinct around 1500? Answer: New Zealand

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