P2P lenders' RBI plea; GenAI dreams draw dollars

Happy Tuesday! P2P lenders are hoping for some respite from India's central bank amid regulatory squeeze. This and more in today's ETtech Morning Dispatch.

Also in the letter:
■ ETtech Done Deals
■ BlueStone IPO opens
■ Awfis' Q1 report card

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Peer-to-peer (P2P) lending platforms are knocking on the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) door, seeking relief as the sector grapples with stringent rules that have gutted business.

Driving the news: Assets under management (AUM) by P2P lenders have collapsed to Rs 1,500 crore from nearly Rs 10,000 crore a year ago, industry executives told us.


Quick rewind: P2P lending first came under formal regulation in 2017. The real squeeze, however, began late last year when the RBI tightened norms and issued clarifications.

These changes upended business models, disrupted partnerships with big fintechs and forced several platforms to shrink or shut lending operations.

Also Read: P2P lending slows as RBI move clouds future of key players

Major players pull out: Market leaders Faircent and Liquiloans have almost stopped fresh disbursals. LenDenClub retooled its operations and is cautiously trying to rebuild after nearly a year of battling the new framework.

Loan book impact: With fresh disbursals drying up, bad loans are now in full view. Industry estimates suggest nearly 20% of loans are overdue beyond 90 days.

Adding to the pain, the RBI's T+1 settlement rule has led to a lot of capital remaining undeployed.

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India's generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) startups are firmly in the spotlight, pulling in $524 million in funding in the first seven months of 2025. That's four times the $129 million raised in 2021, and comfortably ahead of the $475 million total for all of last year.

Tell me more:

• Enterprise software players such as Fractal Analytics, AtomicWork and TrueFoundry are driving the surge, according to market research firm Venture Intelligence.
• Venture capital firm Elevation Capital has sharply increased its bets, closing 20 AI investments in the past two years, compared to its usual five to six annually, Krishna Mehra, AI partner at the firm, told us.

Miles to go: The pace mirrors a global investment wave, though India's numbers still pale in comparison. Worldwide, GenAI startups raised $49.2 billion in the first half of 2025, up from $44.2 billion for all of 2024, according to a recent EY Ireland report.

• Some of the largest deals in H1 2025 include OpenAI's mega $40 billion round, xAI's $10 billion raise, Databricks securing $5 billion, and Anthropic's $3.5 billion round led by Lightspeed Venture Partners.
• The US alone represented 97% of global deal value and 62% of deal count, the report added.

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Anjali Sardana, CEO, Pronto

Home services startup Pronto has raised $11 million (approximately Rs 96 crore) as it flipped back to India.

Deal details:

• The latest funding was jointly led by General Catalyst and Glade Brook Capital.
• Existing backer Bain Capital Ventures also participated in the round.
• The round values Pronto at $45 million, or around Rs 394 crore.

Expand footprint:

• Pronto plans to expand in Mumbai, Bengaluru, and other Indian metros over the next 18 months.
• The company intends to build micro-hubs in residential clusters to ensure rapid service.
• It will also hire and train 10,000 professionals, build quality-assurance systems, and introduce real-time operations technology.

Rivals build war chests: The quick home services sector is warming up. Urban Company filed documents in April for a Rs 1,900-crore initial public offering. In May, Mumbai-based Snabbit secured $19 million in a funding round led by Lightspeed, with expansion on its agenda.


Karan Miglani and Ritwik Khara, cofounders, Elivaas

Luxury vacation rental platform Elivaas raised $10.4 million (Rs 87 crore) in a funding round led by Vertex Ventures Southeast Asia and India. Existing investors Peak XV Partners and venture firm 3one4 Capital also participated in the round.

The company will deploy the funds to expand into the Indian market and build a global presence.


Prem Bhatia, CEO, Graas AI

Ecommerce technology company Graas AI secured $9 million in a funding round led by venture capital fund Tin Men Capital. Other investors participating in the round include Incred Wealth, Orzon, Integra Partners, and Yuj Ventures.

Grass will use the funds to build a stack of AI agents to replace brands' fragmented dashboards, disconnected tools, and manual workflows.

Also Read: Speciale Invest's Fund III closes at Rs 600 crore; eyes investing in 18-20 deeptech startups

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Gaurav Singh Kushwaha, CEO, Bluestone

Omnichannel jewellery retailer BlueStone's Rs 1,541 crore initial public offering (IPO) was subscribed 39% on the first day of the issue's launch, with institutional buyers leading the charge. The grey market premium (GMP) was Rs 9, signalling a modest 1.74% gain on the upper price band of Rs 517.

By investor class:

• Qualified institutional buyers (QIBs), who typically bid late, swept up 57% of their allocation.
• Retail investors picked up 38% of their allotment.
• Non-institutional investors took 4% of the shares on offer.

The issue closes on August 13.


Deal structure:

• Rs 820 crore in fresh issue.
• 1.39 crore shares in an offer-for-sale from existing investors, including Accel, Saama, Kalaari, Iron Pillar, and Sunil Kant Munjal.
• At the top price band, BlueStone commands a valuation of Rs 7,823 crore.

Financials: Revenue surged to Rs 1,770 crore in FY25 from Rs 771 crore in FY23, a CAGR of about 52%. Losses widened to Rs 222 crore as the company poured money into store rollouts and marketing, though gross margins improved to 37.94%.

Also Read: IPO-bound BlueStone geared for unicorn tag

As ET had reported last week, BlueStone had trimmed the size of its fresh issue component from Rs 1,000 crore to Rs 820 crore.

The company, which had initially targeted a valuation of over Rs 10,000 crore, has adapted to current market sentiment and is now going public at a lower valuation.

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Amit Ramani, MD, Awfis

Awfis' 3x profit surge: Coworking space provider Awfis Space Solutions reported a threefold rise in the net profit for the April-June quarter to Rs 10 crore against a 30% jump in operating revenue to Rs 335 crore, driven by sustained demand and healthy occupancy levels across its centres.

Daily needs top UPI usage in July: Groceries and supermarkets were the top category by transaction volume on the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) in July, clocking 3.03 billion payments worth Rs 64,882 crore, per National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) data.

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