Rentomojo’s valuation jump; SoftBank’s Meesho windfall

Rentomojo is expected to go public at a valuation nearly five times higher than its previous private market round. This and more in today's ETtech Top 5.

Also in the letter:
■ Desi CXOs take charge
■ Scapia's lending push
■ OpenAI's Astra debuts

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Rentomojo to go public at Rs 4,246 crore valuation; up 5x from last private round

Geetansh Bamania, founder, Rentomojo

Rentomojo is heading for the public markets at an estimated valuation of Rs 4,246 crore, based on the upper end of its Rs 384-404 IPO price band announced on Friday.

Driving the news:

• The post-money valuation would be almost five times the Rs 850-900 crore level at which the company last raised private capital in 2024.
• The initial public offering (IPO) includes a Rs 150 crore fresh issue.
• Existing investors, including Accel, Chiratae Ventures, and ValueQuest, will offload shares worth Rs 1,106 crore.
• Accel could earn 8.2 times its investment at the upper price band, while Chiratae Ventures could make around five times. Both invested in Rentomojo during its seed round.

Tell me more: The Securities and Exchange Board of India cleared Rentomojo's IPO plans in July. The rental startup went through a difficult period during Covid before returning to growth. Its turnaround earned it the Comeback Kid award at the ET Startup Awards 2024.

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SoftBank sells Meesho shares worth Rs 1,650 crore, clocks 3x return on investment

Japan's SoftBank has sold Rs 1,650 crore ($174 million) worth of shares in ecommerce company Meesho, marking its first stake sale nearly five years after its initial investment.

What's happening?

• SoftBank offloaded 80 million shares at Rs 206.3 each through two bulk transactions on the National Stock Exchange (NSE) on Thursday.
• The transaction represents about 1.7% of Meesho.
• SoftBank owned 396.4 million shares, or 8.6%, before the transaction. Its holding has now fallen to 316.4 million shares, or about 6.9%.
• At Thursday's closing price of Rs 209.74, the remaining stake is worth around Rs 6,635 crore ($700 million).

More on this: SoftBank has put around Rs 2,500-2,600 crore into Meesho, according to the company's IPO filings. Including the value of its remaining shares, the investor has so far seen about 3.2x returns.

SoftBank's partial exit comes after several other early investors monetised their holdings following Meesho's listing. Elevation Capital and Peak XV Partners sold Rs 1,949 crore worth of shares in August, followed by Y Combinator's sale of about Rs 970 crore.

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The new ‘desi’ power circle: Rise of the next wave of Indian-origin leaders in Big Tech

Anil Chakravarthy, CEO, Adobe

The Indian-origin leadership group in Silicon Valley is expanding beyond chief executives, with more executives now heading key functions such as finance, technology, product and people.

Not just OGs: Indian-origin leaders such as Sundar Pichai (Google), Satya Nadella (Microsoft), Sridhar Ramaswamy (Snowflake), Neal Mohan (YouTube), Nikesh Arora (Palo Alto Networks) and Arvind Krishna (IBM) have long been among the most prominent names in Silicon Valley.

Most recently, on September 4, Anil Chakravarthy was appointed Adobe's new chief executive, succeeding longtime CEO Shantanu Narayen, who will step down from the role and remain as executive chair.

But a newer group is taking charge of other crucial functions at major global technology companies.

The new additions:

• Arvind KC: Appointed OpenAI's chief people officer in February 2026, he is overseeing hiring, onboarding, development and organisational systems.
• Balaji Krishnamurthy: Uber's chief financial officer since February, succeeding Prashanth Mahendra-Rajah.
• Asha Sharma: Heads the Xbox ecosystem and Activision Blizzard integration at Microsoft Gaming since February.
• Rahul Patil: Anthropic's chief technology officer since October 2025, succeeding cofounder Sam McCandlish.
• Sabih Khan: Took over the role of Apple's chief operating officer in July 2025.

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Scapia eyes lending push, widens bank partnerships

Anil Goteti, founder, Scapia

Travel fintech Scapia plans to add lending to its offering in the coming months and bring more banks on board as it expands its financial services, founder and chief executive Anil Goteti told us.

More on this: The new lending product will be offered through banks and non-banking financial companies and can be used for travel and other lifestyle expenses. Scapia will not create a separate lending entity.

More banking tie-ups will help Scapia reach more customers and reduce its reliance on individual issuers, Goteti said.

Tell me more: Scapia is still investing for growth, but is working to improve its economics by combining its cards and travel businesses.

Goteti was also nominated for the Comeback Kid category at The Economic Times Startup Awards 2026 for bouncing back with Scapia after his previous startup, Protonn, shut down in 2022.

Also Read: Scapia secures $63 million funding from General Catalyst, Peak XV Partners and Z47

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OpenAI launches new Astra model amid growing scrutiny over agent safety

OpenAI has unveiled GPT‑6 Astra, which it describes as its fastest and most capable model yet.

What can it do:

• According to the company, the model is able to handle tasks ranging from tax preparation and legal memo formatting to game development, architectural rendering, and apartment hunting.
• Astra can complete some jobs in minutes that would take humans hours, such as cat‑sitter research (about 5 minutes vs 30 minutes) and job searches (under 3 minutes vs 5 hours).

Safety concerns: The launch comes as OpenAI faces heightened scrutiny after its AI agents escaped a controlled test environment in July and accessed Hugging Face systems while attempting to complete a task.

Additionally, Reuters reported on Friday that a swarm of rogue OpenAI agents took over a German website earlier this year and turned it into a bulletin board for other AI agents. OpenAI officials learned of this many weeks ago but did not disclose it publicly, the report said.