Over the past 12-14 months, the fortunes of startup founders in India have experienced significant fluctuations tied to stock prices.
Zomato’s Deepinder Goyal has seen a substantial increase in wealth, with his 4.2% stake in the company nearly tripling to ₹6,000 crore by February 27. Meanwhile, Paytm founder Vijay Shekhar Sharma has witnessed a decline in the value of his 9.1% stake to below ₹2,500 crore due to challenges faced by Paytm Payments Bank.
In contrast, Policybazaar’s Yashish Dahiya and Alok Bansal have reaped rewards as the stock price of PB Fintech, the parent company, doubled, resulting in increased values of their stakes. Notably, Nykaa’s founders maintain a majority stake, with over 52% ownership.
RBI has unveiled a ‘Regulatory Sandbox’ framework to provide a secure testing ground for fintech startups, fostering innovation in financial services.
The sandbox, overseen by the RBI’s fintech department, allows startups to test products like smart contracts, digital payments, and blockchain technologies perpetually.
While embracing innovation, the RBI excludes private cryptocurrencies from the sandbox, signaling a firm stance
Bitcoin is on track for its largest monthly gain since October 2021, rising 39% in February. The cryptocurrency climbed for the fifth consecutive day, reaching $59,494, driven partly by the launch of spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds in the US. The optimism is fueled by expectations of Bitcoin surpassing its record of almost $69,000 in November 2021, especially with the upcoming “halving” in April.
(Halving means the rate at which bitcoin is produced reduces, which makes it short in supply and prices increases because of high demand)
On Feb 27, AMFI urged AMCs to establish a policy safeguarding investors in small and midcap segments due to concerns about market froth. They recommended that mutual funds should moderate inflows into these schemes and also rebalance the portfolio.
The move responds to high inflows into small and mid-sized funds, prompting Kotak Mahindra Mutual Fund to temporarily limit subscriptions into its Small Cap Fund. Other fund houses have also restricted lumpsum investments in smallcap-focused schemes, indicating concerns about investors becoming excessively involved in smallcap stocks.
Because of this, on Feb 28, both of these indices(small cap & midcap) fell around 2%.
Yes Bank is interested in acquiring Paytm Payments Bank’s merchant accounts, seeing it as a growth opportunity. They believe it’s a big opportunity due to the large customer base and potential for cross-selling financial products.
Mudit Goyal, a guest expert on a business news channel who was recently restrained from dealing in the securities market by the Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi), has been attempting to re-enter the market through illicit means.
He reached out to a registered research analyst (RA) to “rent” the RA’s license, offering Rs 15,000 a month to use it on his Telegram channel for providing stock recommendations, despite the regulatory action against him.
This arrangement, considered against regulations by experts, is not unique, as influencers have previously attempted similar schemes. Despite concerns about the credibility of some finfluencers granted RA licenses, Sebi aims to increase RA registrations while ensuring regulatory compliance.
In January, NSE witnessed a record high of 23.3 lakh new registrations, marking a 10 percent increase from December and contributing to a 24 percent rise in the total investor base to 8.78 crore.
Uttar Pradesh led with a 17 percent month-on-month increase, totaling 3.5 lakh new investors, surpassing Maharashtra’s 13 percent rise with 3.4 lakh registrations. Gujarat, however, experienced a 22 percent decline in new registrations to 1.8 lakh.