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Eternal’s Q2 profit rises; SBI flags customer data leak
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Eternal’s Q2 profit has surged, with Blinkit contributing significantly to the growth. This and more in today’s ETtech Top 5.
Also in the letter:
■ MyGate-Adonmo merger
■ Oyo parent halves IPO fresh issue
■ OpenAI agents weaken monitoring
(L-R) Eternal CEO Albinder Dhindsa and vice chairman Deepinder Goyal
Eternal, the parent company of Zomato and Blinkit, reported a 92.3% on-year jump in net profit to Rs 125 crore in the second quarter of FY27, compared with Rs 65 crore in the corresponding quarter of the previous fiscal year.
Financial performance:
Blinkit growth: Blinkit's NOV (net order value) surged 79.3% on-year to Rs 20,940 crore, with QoQ growth of 22.2%. The company added 308 net new stores during the quarter, taking the total count to 2,751. Blinkit said it plans to expand its store network to 5,000 outlets by March 2028.
Private labels: Blinkit does not see a compelling case for expanding private labels to improve margins or drive additional demand, Eternal CEO Albinder Dhindsa said in a letter to shareholders.
Verbatim: "The private label case rests on building something genuinely differentiated — a product customers choose for its quality, story-telling or design," he said.
Also Read: Eternal’s District growing faster than planned but most exposed to agentic AI
Deepinder Goyal of Eternal
Deepinder Goyal, founder of Zomato and vice chairman of its parent company Eternal, has teased a new artificial intelligence product called Dark.ai, which is being developed by the Gurugram-based company.
What's Dark: The new AI assistant Eternal is building will keep user conversations private even from its makers. Goyal said Dark uses end-to-end encryption, and that Eternal would not be able to access user chats "even if we are forced to."
Goal: In a letter to shareholders, Goyal explained the idea behind Dark was to remove the worry that someone, someday, can read what you tell an AI bot. "All of us have a dark side, and it needs an outlet where it doesn’t have to hide," he wrote.
In other news: Temple, the wearable venture founded by Deepinder Goyal, will open pre-orders for the first batch of its brain-monitoring device on November 1, the entrepreneur announced on X. Each device will be made to order and delivered within three months of purchase.
State Bank of India (SBI) on Wednesday informed the stock exchanges that personal data of 3,897 customers was found on the dark web. SBI described it as an incident "involving data loss" and said its core operations remain unaffected.
Data breach: A preliminary analysis found about 375,000 records on the dark web. Of these, 3,897 customer records contained personally identifiable information, the bank said.
How it was detected: SBI said it received alerts on October 16 from its threat intelligence service provider, the Defence Cyber Agency, and the Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In) about suspected customer data exposure.
Indian certifying authority eMudhra is at the centre of a major controversy after researchers discovered that eight digital security certificates linked to it had extremely weak private keys. Shares of the company fell 20% and hit the lower circuit after the security flaw was highlighted. Digital certificates help browsers confirm that a website is what it claims to be.
What happened: On 17 October, Mozilla received a report that private keys associated with eight eMudhra intermediate certificates had been compromised.
Security flaw: The eight certificates used far weaker private keys than they should have. The reported key values were between 3 to 8 bits instead of securely generated cryptographic values of 384 bits, which would be practically impossible to guess even for a computer. If someone gains access to private keys, they could exploit users by tricking them into sharing sensitive info.
Also Read: IT Ministry takes 'serious note' of eMudhra incident, forms special team
(L-R) MyGate and Adonmo cofounders Shreyans Daga, Sravanth Gajula, Abhishek Kumar, Sandeep Bommireddi & Rohit Jindal
Housing society management platform Mygate and Eternal-backed digital advertising company Adonmo are merging via an all-stock deal to create an entity valued at around Rs 3,500 crore, with annual revenues of Rs 500 crore.
Business expansion: Mygate cofounder and CEO Abhishek Kumar told us that the merger will help the company diversify its business beyond in-app ads to advertising in housing societies, where Adonmo is currently present.
Leadership: As part of the merger, Adonmo founders Sandeep Bommireddi and Sravanth Gajula will join Mygate’s board. They will also take up operational roles in the company, Kumar said.
Also Read:Mygate closes Rs 225 crore deal with Dharana Capital
Prism CEO Ritesh Agarwal
Oyo parent Prism is planning to cut the size of the fresh issue in its proposed IPO (initial public offering) to Rs 3,350 crore from Rs 6,650 crore, sources familiar with the matter told us.
Better balance sheet: Sources said that the reduction in the issue size follows a stronger balance-sheet, which has lowered the amount of capital the company needs to raise.
Debt reduction: Per the revised structure, most of the issue proceeds are proposed to be used to repay or prepay certain borrowings, in part or in full.
Moody’s outlook: Global ratings agency Moody's recently revised the outlook on Prism to positive from stable, while affirming the company's B2 corporate family rating. Prism is expected to sustain stronger earnings and free cash flow generation over the next 12-18 months.
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OpenAI CEO Sam Altman
OpenAI said on Tuesday that two of its AI agents weakened parts of an internal monitoring system designed to detect misbehaviour, in the latest case of such agents acting in ways their developers did not intend them to.
First incident: OpenAI said a GPT-6.1 Sol agent working on an internal testing task on October 3 suppressed automatic security alerts after deciding that an earlier instruction not to send Slack messages also covered safety notifications.
Second incident: On October 6, a GPT-6 Astra agent removed a safety monitor while copying an existing piece of code and later incorrectly claimed it had not done so, OpenAI said.
What went wrong: "In both cases, the agents considered whether monitoring safeguards should be preserved, but interpreted routine coding instructions as permission to weaken them," the company said.
Also Read: OpenAI says AI models went rogue during testing, triggering 'unprecedented' breach at startup
Also in the letter:
■ MyGate-Adonmo merger
■ Oyo parent halves IPO fresh issue
■ OpenAI agents weaken monitoring
Eternal Q2 Results: Profit rises 92% to Rs 125 crore; revenue up 78%
Eternal, the parent company of Zomato and Blinkit, reported a 92.3% on-year jump in net profit to Rs 125 crore in the second quarter of FY27, compared with Rs 65 crore in the corresponding quarter of the previous fiscal year.
Financial performance:
- Revenue from operations: Up 77.6% on-year to Rs 24,138 crore in Q2FY27, from Rs 13,590 crore in Q2FY26.
- Total expenses: Increased 75% to Rs 24,166 crore from Rs 13,813 crore a year earlier.
- Net profit: Rose 36% quarter-on-quarter (QoQ) from Rs 92 crore in Q1FY27.
- Revenue growth: Increased 19.4% QoQ from Rs 20,211 crore in the previous quarter.
- Ebitda: Up 26.6% QoQ to Rs 752 crore, from Rs 594 crore in Q1FY27. Ebitda margin expanded to 3.15% from 2.95% in the previous quarter.
Blinkit growth: Blinkit's NOV (net order value) surged 79.3% on-year to Rs 20,940 crore, with QoQ growth of 22.2%. The company added 308 net new stores during the quarter, taking the total count to 2,751. Blinkit said it plans to expand its store network to 5,000 outlets by March 2028.
Private labels: Blinkit does not see a compelling case for expanding private labels to improve margins or drive additional demand, Eternal CEO Albinder Dhindsa said in a letter to shareholders.
Verbatim: "The private label case rests on building something genuinely differentiated — a product customers choose for its quality, story-telling or design," he said.
Also Read: Eternal’s District growing faster than planned but most exposed to agentic AI
Eternal’s chatbot will keep user conversations private even from the company
Deepinder Goyal, founder of Zomato and vice chairman of its parent company Eternal, has teased a new artificial intelligence product called Dark.ai, which is being developed by the Gurugram-based company.
What's Dark: The new AI assistant Eternal is building will keep user conversations private even from its makers. Goyal said Dark uses end-to-end encryption, and that Eternal would not be able to access user chats "even if we are forced to."
Goal: In a letter to shareholders, Goyal explained the idea behind Dark was to remove the worry that someone, someday, can read what you tell an AI bot. "All of us have a dark side, and it needs an outlet where it doesn’t have to hide," he wrote.
In other news: Temple, the wearable venture founded by Deepinder Goyal, will open pre-orders for the first batch of its brain-monitoring device on November 1, the entrepreneur announced on X. Each device will be made to order and delivered within three months of purchase.
SBI hit by cyberattack, customer data leaked on dark web: All you need to know
State Bank of India (SBI) on Wednesday informed the stock exchanges that personal data of 3,897 customers was found on the dark web. SBI described it as an incident "involving data loss" and said its core operations remain unaffected.
Data breach: A preliminary analysis found about 375,000 records on the dark web. Of these, 3,897 customer records contained personally identifiable information, the bank said.
How it was detected: SBI said it received alerts on October 16 from its threat intelligence service provider, the Defence Cyber Agency, and the Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In) about suspected customer data exposure.
eMudhra shares fall 20% after researchers point out its certificates are compromised
Indian certifying authority eMudhra is at the centre of a major controversy after researchers discovered that eight digital security certificates linked to it had extremely weak private keys. Shares of the company fell 20% and hit the lower circuit after the security flaw was highlighted. Digital certificates help browsers confirm that a website is what it claims to be.
What happened: On 17 October, Mozilla received a report that private keys associated with eight eMudhra intermediate certificates had been compromised.
Security flaw: The eight certificates used far weaker private keys than they should have. The reported key values were between 3 to 8 bits instead of securely generated cryptographic values of 384 bits, which would be practically impossible to guess even for a computer. If someone gains access to private keys, they could exploit users by tricking them into sharing sensitive info.
Also Read: IT Ministry takes 'serious note' of eMudhra incident, forms special team
Mygate, Eternal-backed digital ads firm Adonmo to merge, create Rs 3,500 crore entity
Housing society management platform Mygate and Eternal-backed digital advertising company Adonmo are merging via an all-stock deal to create an entity valued at around Rs 3,500 crore, with annual revenues of Rs 500 crore.
Business expansion: Mygate cofounder and CEO Abhishek Kumar told us that the merger will help the company diversify its business beyond in-app ads to advertising in housing societies, where Adonmo is currently present.
Leadership: As part of the merger, Adonmo founders Sandeep Bommireddi and Sravanth Gajula will join Mygate’s board. They will also take up operational roles in the company, Kumar said.
Also Read:Mygate closes Rs 225 crore deal with Dharana Capital
Oyo parent Prism to cut IPO fresh issue nearly 50% to Rs 3,350 crore: Sources
Oyo parent Prism is planning to cut the size of the fresh issue in its proposed IPO (initial public offering) to Rs 3,350 crore from Rs 6,650 crore, sources familiar with the matter told us.
Better balance sheet: Sources said that the reduction in the issue size follows a stronger balance-sheet, which has lowered the amount of capital the company needs to raise.
Debt reduction: Per the revised structure, most of the issue proceeds are proposed to be used to repay or prepay certain borrowings, in part or in full.
Moody’s outlook: Global ratings agency Moody's recently revised the outlook on Prism to positive from stable, while affirming the company's B2 corporate family rating. Prism is expected to sustain stronger earnings and free cash flow generation over the next 12-18 months.
AI agents weakened parts of an internal monitoring system: OpenAI
OpenAI said on Tuesday that two of its AI agents weakened parts of an internal monitoring system designed to detect misbehaviour, in the latest case of such agents acting in ways their developers did not intend them to.
First incident: OpenAI said a GPT-6.1 Sol agent working on an internal testing task on October 3 suppressed automatic security alerts after deciding that an earlier instruction not to send Slack messages also covered safety notifications.
Second incident: On October 6, a GPT-6 Astra agent removed a safety monitor while copying an existing piece of code and later incorrectly claimed it had not done so, OpenAI said.
What went wrong: "In both cases, the agents considered whether monitoring safeguards should be preserved, but interpreted routine coding instructions as permission to weaken them," the company said.
Also Read: OpenAI says AI models went rogue during testing, triggering 'unprecedented' breach at startup
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