Today’s deep-dive looks at how PharmEasy—once valued at over $5 billion—was forced to rebuild around the one business it didn’t build, with its leader now steering the entire group.

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“Between FY22-24, we consciously shrank down PharmEasy in an effort to become profitable,” Guha told The CapTable. “Now in FY25, we are back on the growth track.”

The mandate is clear—prioritise Thyrocare, profitability, and maximise synergies across the businesses. Scale down what doesn’t make money and double down on what does.

Amid all this, one business never stopped making money: Thyrocare.

Now, the shift is official: Rahul Guha, the CEO of Thyrocare, now runs API Holdings, PharmEasy’s parent company.

What did happen was a debt spiral, a brutal funding winter, and multiple course corrections. PharmEasy’s market share shrank. Growth-at-all-costs took a back seat. Founders exited.

A quick public listing would help pay back the loans. Everything would come together beautifully.

Only that IPO never happened.

But the deal was largely debt-funded.

At the time, PharmEasy’s founders painted a grand vision. Thyrocare would be one piece of a vast healthcare platform spanning medicine delivery, hospital supplies, software, telemedicine and chronic care.

This dupe economy thrives because luxury brands ignored India’s middle market.
As beauty sales grow, legal pressure will follow.
When it does, high-profile sellers like Yusuf Bhai will be first in line.
For now, though, smelling rich has never been cheaper. Read today’s piece in @thecaptableco

Yusuf Bhai, now an Instagram star with millions of followers, sniffs a customer’s shirt, names the perfume in seconds, and recreates it on camera.

Despite stiff competition, Agaro remains strongly positioned to move fast to the next big gap—and is a rare scalable alternative to the D2C playbook. More in today’s story:

Its success stems from agility: it quickly exited crowded markets like LED, audio, and luggage, prioritises profitability over growth-at-all-costs, and reinvests insights from reviews, search trends, and category data into rapid SKU iteration, writes @prnvbal.

Why, then, do core city residents shop less online?
Which major metropolitan city is the odd one out?
How does migrant labour influence these figures?
Find out more in Part 3 of The CapTable’s series on how India consumes. Out now:

Since 1991, urban design has incentivised gated communities, distant tech parks, and scarce retail—making online shopping essential, not optional.
Delivery fees often beat costly in-person trips to distant malls or markets, writes @ParBen24 in today’s sprawling, data-rich story.

Will platforms pass on these costs to consumers and jack up prices?
Or will workers get smaller payouts? With pending operational rollout and rule finalisation many questions remain, writes @Verma_Shivani12.
The full, free read:

The 2020-drafted codes don’t reflect the post-pandemic gig economy, they say.
SaaS-based ride-hailing platforms like Rapido and Uber would be minimally impacted, but delivery and q-commerce firms would be hit harder.
Swiggy's annual costs alone would increase by ~₹170 Cr.

Today’s story is all about the shifting tides in regional funding: between robust IPOs, collapsing seed-stage rounds, and deepening sector specialisation, @Saikeerthi1515 and @Patwardhannn had their work cut out for them.
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Maharashtra and Delhi NCR showed broader geographic dispersion, led by Pune, Thane, Gurugram, and Noida.
Both of these regions actually showed funding growth year-on-year. In contrast, Karnataka’s fell.

Smartstaff isn’t an outlier, however: even sector leader Apna has pivoted amid unprofitability.
The issue appears to be systemic. Is it possible at all, then, to profitably formalise the blue-collar sector? Read:

It then pivoted to SaaS after US tariff shocks hit garment exports, but software sales reportedly stalled, leading investors to reject fresh funding at prior valuations, writes @Verma_Shivani12 in today’s story.