Plum's revenue crosses ₹500 Cr in FY26 as profit nearly doubles

Fact

Bengaluru-based D2C beauty and personal care brand Plum reported a 28% year-on-year rise in revenue to ₹515 Cr in FY26, up from ₹402 Cr in FY25, per financial statements sourced from the Registrar of Companies. Profit nearly doubled to ₹49 Cr from ₹25 Cr, with EBITDA margin improving to 8.12% and ROCE to 13.2%. Advertising and promotional spend, the company's largest cost line, rose 32% to ₹184.4 Cr, while cost of materials consumed also rose 28% to ₹184.4 Cr. Founded in 2013, Plum sells skincare, bodycare, fragrance, haircare and gifting products through its own site and marketplaces including Amazon, Nykaa and Flipkart, and has raised over $50 Mn to date, most recently $35 Mn in a 2022 Series C led by A91 Partners. It competes with Juicy Chemistry, WOW Skin Science, Mamaearth and Sugar Cosmetics, in a category that has recently seen HUL acquire Minimalist, Honasa acquire The Derma Co, and L'Oréal reportedly acquire a majority stake in Innovist, Bare Anatomy's parent.

Interpretation

Profit nearly doubling on just 28% revenue growth, with ad spend still the single largest cost line, shows Plum found real operating leverage this year rather than just spending its way to a bigger topline, at a moment when strategic acquirers are actively shopping for exactly this kind of profitable digital-first beauty brand.

Action

D2C beauty founders should benchmark their own ad-spend-to-revenue ratio against Plum's roughly 36% as one data point for what "efficient enough to be a credible M&A target" looks like in this category right now.

Watch next

Whether Plum's improved profitability draws acquisition interest from any of the same strategic buyers active in the category, and whether its FY27 numbers show the ad-spend ratio holding or rising further.

Fact

Pernia's Pop Up Shop parent Purple Style Labs' ₹680 Cr IPO closed its three-day bidding window oversubscribed 1.29X overall, receiving bids for 88.54 Lakh shares against 68.49 Lakh on offer, per BSE data. Retail investors led demand throughout, closing at 1.57X subscription (19.57 Lakh shares bid against 12.45 Lakh reserved), while qualified institutional buyers came in late and strong on the final day to close at 1.43X (53.27 Lakh shares against 37.26 Lakh). Non-institutional investors were the one weak spot, closing undersubscribed at 0.84X (15.70 Lakh shares against 18.68 Lakh reserved). The issue climbed from just 8% subscribed on Day 1 to 24% on Day 2 (both flagged in earlier editions) before institutional demand arrived on the final day to push it past full subscription.

Interpretation

An IPO that needed its institutional and retail investors to nearly double down on the final day just to clear 1X, while its middle tier of non-institutional bidders never showed up, is exactly the kind of late, uneven demand pattern this thread has tracked all year, headline coverage improves right up to the wire, but the composition underneath stays fragile.

Action

D2C fashion and luxury-retail brands should read Purple Style Labs' final book as a caution against treating "oversubscribed" as a clean signal, check which investor category actually cleared its quota before assuming demand is broad-based.

Watch next

Where Purple Style Labs lists relative to its ₹546-575 band, and whether the NII shortfall shows up in weak listing-day price support given that segment typically drives early secondary trading.

Fact

Bengaluru-based D2C sneaker brand Comet is raising ₹98.75 Cr ($10.2 Mn) in a Series B round led by new investor Verlinvest, a Belgium-based private equity firm, with Elevation Capital and Nexus Venture Partners also participating alongside smaller checks from Urban Company cofounder Abhiraj Singh Bhal and others. The round values Comet at roughly ₹535 Cr ($56 Mn), a 3.2X jump from its approximately ₹167 Cr post-money valuation after a ₹42.3 Cr Series A in 2024. Founded in 2023 by Utkarsh Gupta and Dishant Daryani, Comet sells India-inspired, fashion-forward sneakers and slides primarily through its own platform; its revenue jumped nearly 4X to ₹29 Cr in FY25 while losses widened to ₹4.39 Cr. It joins a crowded field of homegrown sneaker brands including Gully Labs, Neeman's, ARCs and Doc Sneakers.

Interpretation

A 3.2X valuation jump for a two-year-old brand with just ₹29 Cr in revenue and widening losses shows investors are pricing India's new-age sneaker category on growth rate and design differentiation rather than current profitability, the same land-grab dynamic that played out earlier in D2C luggage before it consolidated.

Action

Founders in adjacent, still-fragmented D2C categories should treat the sneaker market's investor enthusiasm as a signal that category-defining growth, not near-term margins, is what's currently getting priced at premium multiples, and should benchmark their own growth rate against Comet's near-4X before assuming their category has cooled.

Watch next

Whether Comet's FY26 financials, not yet filed, show revenue growth holding pace with its valuation jump, and whether any of its sneaker-category peers announce competing rounds in response.

Fact

Bengaluru-based electric two-wheeler brand Simple Energy has launched its first family escooter, the Simple Wave, across six models in three variants starting at ₹1.10 Lakh ex-showroom; the top-end Simple Wave+ offers a 5 kWh battery, a 243 km IDC-certified range and a 90 kmph top speed. The launch follows similar mass-market moves from rivals Ola Electric and Ather Energy in recent weeks. Simple Energy currently manufactures 3,000 scooters a month at around 35% capacity utilisation, selling roughly 1,500 units a month through 75+ outlets in 63 cities, and plans to scale to 10,000 units a month by March 2027. The company raised ₹250 Cr in debt and equity in June as it prepares for a full-stack EV OEM transition and an eventual IPO; its investor base includes the family office of Thyrocare founder A. Velumani among others, with over $84 Mn raised to date.

Interpretation

Three EV two-wheeler brands moving toward affordable, commuter-focused scooters within weeks of each other shows the category's early premium, early-adopter phase is ending, and the real competitive battle is shifting to whoever can hit mass-market price points while actually scaling production capacity.

Action

D2C brands selling into two-wheeler owners, helmets, accessories, aftermarket parts, should track which EV brand actually executes on its stated production ramp, since Simple Energy's current 35% capacity utilisation shows a real gap between launch announcements and delivered volume in this category.

Watch next

Whether Simple Energy's manufacturing utilisation actually climbs toward its 75-80% FY27 target, and how Ola Electric's and Ather's competing mass-market launches perform against the Wave on pricing and range.

Fact

India's ecommerce sector is projected to grow from $125 Bn in 2024 to $345 Bn by 2030, an 18.4% CAGR, per a new report titled "Smart Growth in a Fast Market" from research consultancy Infisum. Quick commerce is flagged as the fastest-growing segment, valued at an estimated $65-70 Bn by 2030 and expected to contribute 45-50% of incremental e-retail growth; Blinkit leads the category with a 44% share and 900 Mn orders processed in FY26, ahead of Zepto (25%) and Instamart (20%). The report's most D2C-relevant finding: 66% of new D2C orders now originate from Tier II and Tier III cities, and Gen Z, already a third of online shoppers, is expected to become India's largest digital-spending cohort by 2030. By 2030, ecommerce is projected to reach 10-12% of India's total retail spending and serve 420-440 Mn online shoppers.

Interpretation

Two-thirds of new D2C order volume now coming from Tier II-III cities, not metros, means the growth math for most D2C brands has already shifted away from the market most founders still design their default playbook around.

Action

D2C brands still concentrating marketing spend and logistics planning on metro-first strategies should treat the 66% Tier II-III stat as a prompt to re-audit where their actual incremental growth is coming from, not just where their current customer base sits.

Watch next

Whether individual D2C brands' own order-geography data starts to mirror this industry-wide Tier II-III shift, and how quick commerce's projected 45-50% share of incremental growth affects D2C brands' channel mix decisions over the next few years.