Decoding Exits April Pine Labs Exotel Emami Sun Pharma

TITLE: Pine Labs, Exotel, Emami, Kohli’s One8 & Sun Pharma’s $11.75B Mega Deal | Decoding Exits | April CHANNEL: Blume Ventures DATE: 2026-05-08 ---TRANSCRIPT--- Hey, welcome to the third edition this year of the M&A commentary from Bloom. It’s Daga who’s put in a lot of the work behind this research. I’m presenting it as always with our marketing team led by Rohit. So, we have a bunch of interesting deals that happened in the last one month. Some of them always they fall tend to fall into three buckets as we know. There are definitely the brand deals which is Axiom Ayurveda and 180 which was a Virat Kohli brand sort of headlining those two. There is always the strategic technology buys. Pine [music] Labs paid a fairly large sum for Shop Floor. So, it’s not a classic acquire, it’s a proper cash acquisition. There is Exotel, one of our own portfolio bought Dubsmash. And then there’s, you know, what’s becoming almost a routine is the healthcare space. You’re seeing deals happen every other month and we have an example, one more example of that in a brand called Krista IVF in the fertility space which has also been sold by one strategy to another. So, let’s dive right into it and we [music] are not surprised at all with Pine Labs now being a public company. This is something that people have asked me historically, how come we don’t see enough M&A in India? And the interesting thing about M&A in India is that you need EBITDA, profitability, cash flow to start having more currency to be able to buy.

[music] And historically, if everybody stayed private, then you were worried about whether you use those resources for growth or do you use them to buy another asset? And people weren’t sure of selling an asset for [music] stock. And so, tech M&A used to be fairly limited. And now that you have 30, 40, 50 companies in the public markets and a good half of them throwing out cash and having raised cash in the IPOs, the M&A becomes a useful tool to actually start growing faster. And inorganic growth is not unexpected anymore. And uh doubly so, it’s coming out of cash flow for the first time. And doubly so because it also increases the number of currency options you have. [music] You have cash, you have a public, which is a liquid stock. And so suddenly, it looks very attractive even to the seller. And you have multiple ways of accelerating that M&A engine. I think this has been inevitable. And I think this is what’s nice about the current environment. And when people say, “Why are tech companies going public?” It’s because the ones who have ambition to grow faster suddenly have multiple currency streams. So Pine Labs, as you know, is a public company now. Went public late last year, multi-billion-dollar IPO valuation, and acquired a company called Shopflo, which is a Gurgaon-based D2C checkout optimization platform. Not very old, you know, 4-5 years old. And had investors such as Tiger and Better Capital, TKQ Ventures. And it’s a 100% acquisition. It’s not a giant deal, but it’s a solid, you know, 88-crore cash deal. And given that it’s a public company, there will be regulatory filings and the paperwork. And they expect it to close this quarter. And so it’s a good outcome for everyone again. It’s not likely a company that could have become a billion-dollar company. So finding a good home where it can be scaled much faster is fantastic. You know, it’s not a very large revenue company. Our sources tell us a year ago it was about 15 and a half crores. So on last year’s revenue, that’s a kind of 6x multiple. And decent for a growing SaaS checkout platform. And one that is obviously not attracting enough capital to become a much larger player. And what does Pine Labs get in return? Pine Labs, as you know, if you walk into a lot of stores, you see their, you know, POS machines. Their weight was in in offline acquisition of merchants. Clearly, India’s an online-first ecosystem amongst new-age customers. So the D2C ecosystem is flourishing. And therefore having a play inside of D2C and checkouts and buying into that technology is something that Pine Labs been eyeing for a long time. I you know, I’ve had these conversations with Amrish ever since he sold Citrus and one fine day moved from PayU and became the Pine Labs CEO. And so, a lot of interesting action I’m expecting in the payments ecosystem and in this universe. So, it’s very it’s kind of similar to what Stripe did with checkout.com at some point. PayU acquired ZestMoney. So, essentially you marry different parts of the value chain in fintech [music] where the bigger player goes and buys out technology layers adjacent to them. The second is the healthcare space which is a common theme as we’ve seen. Redcliffe Labs is a diagnostics company had owned this IVF play called Krista at 50 plus centers in all the major cities. Turned profitable probably about 100 crore revenue was our estimate. Founded in 2018. [music] Initially it was an operate and manage model, transitioned to self-owned. And basically it looks like there’s more, you know, Redcliffe is sticking to its core competence in diagnostics and preventive health and trying to sell something which is non-core to it. And MMG is a injection manufacturing company and the group is and the the company that’s buying it, Moon Care Private, is the healthcare arm of the MMG group. And so, clearly they want to get into frontline businesses and have bought this asset. [music] The estimate is about a 100 crore-ish number as well. And so, [music] this is a 100% acquisition moving from one strategic to another. So, an interesting example of how a a strategic investor or an incubator of a particular business sees potential but then doesn’t see it as a core business and sells it to someone else who wants to grow that business. IVF is an interesting space. It’s a growing market in a large populace nation like India. [music] Just this weekend I heard of another company being started in the space as well. I think the largest in the country is about 150 a center chain. So, long way to go. We’ve been pitched many ideas in the past, but we haven’t necessarily seen a path to a billion dollar company by through aggregation and roll ups. I won’t be surprised if there are a couple of those down the road by the end of the decade. The third is a acquire by one of our own Exotel who’s announced in the media. It’s called the company they bought was Dubverse. Dubverse has built an AI powered speech and audio solution suite. Multilingual video dubbing, subtitles, text to speech, voice generation tools. They have about 3-ish million users, 70-plus languages, enterprise grade multilingual voice AI with deep Indian language capabilities. And Exotel’s kind of a leader in the cloud communication platform space. Been around for 15 years now. And we already process about 20-plus billion interactions annually. So, getting this team, we got co-founders, key engineers, and therefore while it continues to operate as an independent product, existing subscriptions, pricing, etc. haven’t changed. [music] It just allows Exotel to build crazy AI stack depth, build voice and language AI models into their suite rather than having to do all of that work themselves. This India first voice AI play is something that Exotel would definitely benefit from as it tries to grow much faster. [music] Shivkumar, Shivku as we know him, who was the CEO said in the public statement that AI could handle 60% of customer support. And Dubverse is going to be someone who can power that engine. So, very interesting times for us. We have a bunch of exposure in this CX space and customer communication moving to voice AI. We’re seeing a lot of again aggregation, competition, and it’s going to be a space which will inevitably see a lot of M&A and consolidation [music] for the rest of the decade. The consumer brands, we have two to cover. One is Axiom Ayurveda and is a profitable health and wellness company. It was in the natural and functional drink category. They had a flagship brand called Alo Fruit, [music] which is aloe vera pulp based beverages. And they had a decent distribution, offline distribution presence as well. And the portfolio also includes other health juices, Axiom Jeevan Ras and Mukti Gold. Emami had already bought into this company about 26 and 1/2% stake in September ‘23 as a strategic minority. And [snorts] Emami has always been this powerhouse FMCG homegrown brand out of Calcutta, [music] built in a personal care. Even within that I’ve seen acquisitions in the past. Boroplus and Navratna, they’re all a part of the Emami forte. [music] Healthcare, they bought Zandu along the way. And so, not surprisingly, much like ITC and Dabur are buying companies like Yoga Bar and Sprout Life. And Dabur’s bought Badshah Masala, which is not necessarily in health, but essentially extension of FMCG F&B portfolios is becoming a common theme. And so, we see Emami here buying Axiom for around 200 crores. It’s a phased acquisition. One was done historically. They’re adding another 36 plus percent, [music] which will put Emami in control and have them at 63% and the last tranche is expected to get done later this year. The founders and existing shareholders are fully exiting. So, this is not a small business. It’s done well. It’s 180 crores expected revenue from what we gleaned, FY26. [music] It must be close to that now that the year is done. And relatively attractive valuation for some company that’s turned profitable at 200-ish crore valuation. So, this is a great example of what we will continue to see in brands. Consumer brands is, I think, it’s a norm to see businesses that or brands that grow into a 100, 200, 300 crore level. We saw Minimalist last year get acquired by Unilever for a huge premium because I think they were growing very rapidly with great margins. This not so much in terms of relative to revenue, but I guess it wasn’t seen as a rapidly growing international segment and didn’t attract the same premium. Look, a 100 crore brand can get bought for like a 180 crore brand can get bought for 200 and a 350 crore brand can get bought for 3,000. And that’s the nature of how valuations work. It depends on growth, margin [music] structures, etc. The last ones are a fun one. Virat Kohli, obviously, owns the brand 18 and it was [music] lived under Puma India as a licensee. 18 is, of course, his jersey number for those who don’t follow cricket. Under Puma, it was an internet-first brand targeting premium athleisure, which is becoming a huge category in itself. Shout-out to Bliss Club, which is not in our portfolio, but love wearing one of their functional jackets this weekend. I got it as a speaker gift and had great fun and could see [music] that India is really upping the game on high-quality apparel, on functional athleisure, etc. And Agilitas Sports was founded in 2023. He was actually ex-MD of Puma India and Southeast Asia, Abhishek Ganguly. So, he’s the same executive who oversaw the original deal and now, basically, Agilitas wants to be a vertically integrated manufacturing-to-retail platform and has started acquiring certain brands. He’s been well-funded. He bought Mochi shoes in 2023 and 18 seems to be like a natural shift of the old home to the new home along with its original partner for Virat, which is Abhishek Ganguly. So, Kohli has taken the capital that he gets out of this deal and has put it back into Agilitas as a minority shareholder. Kohli’s also in Wrogn, as you know. I think not necessarily directly competing, but complementary. So, he’s much like any other great sports personality out there globally today, the idea is to monetize your brand into things which are naturally aligned to who you what you stand for. [music] And Kohli’s shoes and his specifically in and and his apparel in another brand is how we seeing his brand play out. And who won’t want to own a piece of like Kohli merch. So, that’s that’s what Agilitas is paying for. So, I think it’s different from how a Puma would have dealt with this, which is, you know, vertically integrated manufacturing, design, all of these elements are something that Puma would have to build a standalone team for, but Agilitas’ core competency is this. That’s what they they set themselves up for, and it’s a direction in which I think they’re going. And this is not uncommon. Michael Jordan has become a billionaire on the back of Air Jordan, a legendary deal done with Nike, and shown in that movie as well, Air, about a few years ago. Uh similarly, LeBron James and now Roger Federer and On, uh they’ve become significant parts of the brand by way of their licensing deals and ownership, equity ownership. So, uh yeah, sports and celebrities and their ability to monetize themselves into brands and and actually transfer value has been amazing to see. And again, something that’s the flywheel’s just beginning to rotate. I think it’s going to take off. We always have a fun M&A section where we cover something which is typically not related to the startup world, but interesting nevertheless. Sun Pharma is already the number one uh pharmaceutical company in the country. Clearly, their ambition hasn’t waned. They’re looking at taking over a large US uh pharma company, Organon. It’s a New Jersey-based listed company, which had spun off from Merck about 5 years ago. And it operates three uh franchises in women’s health and biosimilars [music] and 70-plus products across 140 companies. So, clearly Sun is buying into even more of its global ambition. It’s fantastic to see India’s largest companies become and push the boundaries on how large they can be globally. It’s Sun today from a small town generics company is now grown to $6.2 billion of pharma revenue. Yeah, the total value is $11.75 billion. I think equity value of 3.5, 3.15 net debt is about 8.6. So, that’s the price they’re paying for Organon and it’s on the back of very interestingly done through a massive bank financing of almost 10 billion and $2 billion of internal cash. So, that’s what’s going to [music] pay for this acquisition. Of course, there will be approvals required. It’s a cross-border deal, global antitrust, FDI, Organon [music] stockholders shareholders have to approve. But, yeah, the die has been cast and I think a year from now you will see probably this conclude and you’ll see an even bigger Sun Pharma in the context of where they want to be globally. And the combined entity pro forma revenue could be as large as 12 billion and pushes it into the top 25 globally. So, yes, very very inspiring entrepreneurial stories from Dilip Shanghvi and [music] Sun Pharma. And that is a wrap on this month’s M&A stories from Azure Bloom. I hope you guys enjoyed it and yeah, never a dull moment when you’re looking [music] through even one month of M&A in India. We do try and stick to predominantly what is relevant in the startup universe, but there’s always a large [music] interesting deal that provides a nice backdrop for what happens in the relatively small tech M&A space. Thank you.