Burning billions in the 10-min delivery game; Plans for faster drone adoption

Hello,

Happy Valentine’s Day!

While love may be in the air, not every proposal is a welcome one—case in point, OpenAI and its latest unexpected suitor, Elon Musk. 

In the latest move following the unsolicited all-cash bid by the billionaire earlier this week, OpenAI has claimed that Musk’s bid and attempt to block the ChatGPT maker’s conversion to a for-profit model is an attempt to undermine a competitor. 

In response, Musk told the court he’d drop his bid if “OpenAI’s board is prepared to preserve the charity’s mission” and halt its restructuring. 

Meanwhile, the Tesla chief’s own company, xAI, is set to release its Grok 3 chatbot, which he claims will outperform everything released in the market so far.

The details of the model, however, have been kept tightly under wraps. In fact, an engineer at the firm claimed he was recently forced to resign after refusing to take down a social media post ranking Grok 3 against other models.

Musk and Sam Altman’s longstanding feud has been simmering away in the backdrop of a booming AI arms race, which has had entrants like DeepSeek shake up the whole arena. 

Now, companies including Alibaba are also stepping up their game as its chairman confirmed its AI technology would help power Apple’s iPhone in China, the world’s top smartphone market. 

But hey, all’s fair in love and war. 

In today’s newsletter, we will talk about 

• Burning billions in 10-min delivery game
• Plans for faster drone adoption
• Agara Lake becomes networking hub

Here’s your trivia for today: Apart from love and engaged couples, what is St Valentine also a patron saint of?

Quick Commerce

Burning billions in 10-min delivery game

What started as a recipe for success is now leaving a bitter taste for investors—at least in the short term. Zomato and newly-listed Swiggy are betting big on growth through quick commerce but the spending required to ward off intense competition in the sector is spooking investors and has wiped off billions from the market cap of these two companies. 

Both companies have been forced to pour money into their instant delivery arms to fend off competition from Zepto—which gobbled up over a billion dollars in funding last year—and deep-pocketed newcomers like Flipkart and Amazon.

Taking a hit:

• Since 2025 began, Swiggy’s shares have plummeted 37% to Rs 341.40, while Zomato’s stock has slumped nearly 22% to Rs 214.70 on the NSE. That’s roughly $5 billion and $7 billion wiped off their respective valuations.
• While quick commerce is currently in an “early high-growth, high-competition” phase, which calls for significant capital investments, investors are also worried about lacklustre growth in their core food delivery business.
• The December quarter saw both platforms aggressively expand their dark store networks—Zomato's Blinkit added 216 while Swiggy opened 96 new locations. They’ve also been ramping up discounts and marketing spending to attract customers in new markets.

SMB

Plans for faster drone adoption

Unmanned aerial vehicles or ‘drones’ have evolved from being used by the defence forces and moved into civilian territory as well. They are proving to be useful in land mapping, delivery, logistics, and security.

Ankit Mehta, Co-founder and CEO of Mumbai-based ideaForge, says drone tech is ready to evolve from the proof-of-concept stage to large-scale implementation. He believes the time is ripe for the adoption of drones and sees them playing a big role in surveillance, delivery, governance, and security infrastructure. 

Key takeaways:

• IdeaForge has built a platform called Flight Cloud, wherein whenever somebody does a drone mapping, the data gets seamlessly uploaded to the cloud, and it does the post-processing of that data. The company then gives it to an analytics provider to do the specific analytics.
• He continued, “We also believe that it’s not possible for one company to do analytics for everything. So what we have decided is that we create a platform where anybody can offer their analytics to the end customer. We get to offer a complete solution to the end customer.”
• “I feel that hardware is going to have an important role to play in pushing the boundaries of what’s possible in software, because if you don’t have better quality hardware, then software can’t do much,” Mehta says on the hardware aspect of drones.

Feature

Agara Lake becomes networking hub

It is 7 am on a chilly Saturday morning in January. A motley group of around 50 people are gathered, in a circle, at the entrance to the beautiful Agara Lake—one of the many natural lakes in Bengaluru. They are taking turns introducing themselves. So, what brings them together so early in the morning?  

They are all part of Agara Walks & Filter Kaapi—a community-building initiative that helps people from all walks of life connect with each other over morning walks, meaningful conversations, and piping hot kaapi.

Building connections:

• Srikanth Prabhu, former Growth Consultant at Qapita, and Co-founder of VentureLex, wanted to take networking out of seminar halls and ballrooms and started Agara Walks & Filter Kaapi in September 2024. 
• Prabhu uses LinkedIn, X, and WhatsApp to invite people for an early morning walk at Agara Lake. Prabhu has also leveraged partnerships with startups, including Qapita, and communities like HSR Founders’ Club and BLR 101 to get people to participate in the walks. 
• Notable people from the Indian startup ecosystem who have participated in the walks include Ganesh Balakrishnan of Shark Tank India fame, and VCs from Peak XV Partners, Indian Angel Network, 3One4 Capital, Arali Ventures, and FortyTwo.VC. 

News & updates

• Missed expectations: Reddit shares fell 9% in early trading on Thursday after the social media firm missed Wall Street estimates for fourth-quarter daily active unique visitors, hit by Google's search algorithm change.
• No-go: Merger talks between Honda and Nissan have collapsed after the firms failed to agree on a multi-billion-dollar tie-up. The Japanese carmakers, along with junior partner Mitsubishi, had aimed to combine their businesses to fight back against competition from rival firms, especially in China.
• Expand: Coinbase is working on its re-entry to India more than a year after it officially ceased operations in the country. The American crypto exchange is engaging with various Indian authorities, including the Financial Intelligence Unit, which scrutinises financial transactions. 

Apart from love and engaged couples, what is St Valentine also a patron saint of?

Answer: Beekeepers, and people with epilepsy.

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