Aditya

Angel Investor 💵 | 👨‍💼CEO at Faad Capital |Tweeting threads on Startups, Business and India 🇮🇳

[Aditya @thefaadguy]

Buy my book - https://t.co/0uUnw5Len0

[Aditya @thefaadguy]

Cleartrip spent Rs 897 Cr on discounts and cashbacks in FY26
and its revenue for the whole year was Rs 198 Cr.

Cleartrip is a travel booking app for flights and hotels (Flipkart owns it), and in its own filings the discount bill is more than 4 times what it earned and bigger than its whole loss of Rs 805 Cr, which grew 28% on the year before.

A year earlier it spent Rs 608 Cr on discounts against Rs 164 Cr of revenue, so the discount bill grew by close to half while revenue grew by about a fifth.

To me, a discount bill that grows faster than revenue means the company is renting its customers, because the people who came for the cashback leave when the cashback stops.

It is the first line I look for in any consumer company's accounts, because it shows whether people are paying for the product or being paid to use it.

You can't discount your way to a habit.

[Aditya @thefaadguy]

NHPC, which builds India's hydroelectric power plants, made ₹4,220 crore in profit last year, over 20 times the ₹204 crore made by Nykaa.

Yet NHPC is worth ₹73,100 crore and Nykaa is worth ₹97,000 crore.

Lipstick beats hydropower.

[Aditya @thefaadguy]

Cochin Shipyard, which built INS Vikrant, India's first home-built aircraft carrier, made ₹717 crore in profit last year.
SWIGGY lost ₹4,154 crore.

Yet Cochin Shipyard is worth ₹33,000 crore and Swiggy is worth ₹63,000 crore.

Biryani beats aircraft carriers.

[Aditya @thefaadguy]

Central Bank of India, founded in 1911, made ₹4,531 crore in profit last year.
PhysicsWallah lost ₹24 crore.

Yet the bank is worth ₹27,900 crore and PhysicsWallah is worth ₹39,700 crore.

YouTube beats 1911.

[Aditya @thefaadguy]

GAIL, which moves India's natural gas through its pipelines, made ₹1.42 lakh crore in revenue last year, about 4 times the ₹35,584 crore made by Asian Paints.

Yet GAIL is worth ₹1.13 lakh crore and Asian Paints is worth ₹2.31 lakh crore.

The wall beats the pipeline.

[Aditya @thefaadguy]

Indian Overseas Bank, founded in 1937, made ₹5,418 crore in profit last year, nearly 10 times the ₹552 crore made by Paytm.

Yet IOB is worth ₹58,500 crore and Paytm, whose payments bank lost its licence this year, is worth ₹1.06 lakh crore.

Users outlast licences.

[Aditya @thefaadguy]

Hero MotoCorp made ₹47,411 crore in revenue last year, about twice the ₹23,408 crore made by Royal Enfield's parent, Eicher Motors, and more profit too.

Yet Hero is worth ₹1.03 lakh crore and Eicher is worth ₹1.90 lakh crore.

Desire beats volume.

[Aditya @thefaadguy]

Indian Railways carried 741 crore passengers last year.

Every commercial airline on the planet put together carried about 497 crore.

The world flies. India rides.

[Aditya @thefaadguy]

Bank of India was founded in 1906 and earned ₹75,613 crore last year, 16 times the ₹4,645 crore earned by Groww.

Yet the bank is worth ₹61,000 crore and Groww, an app less than 10 years old, is worth ₹1.15 lakh crore.

The app is the new branch.

[Aditya @thefaadguy]

HPCL made ₹4.42 lakh crore in revenue last year, about 30 times the ₹14,601 crore made by Fevicol's parent, Pidilite.

Yet HPCL is worth ₹73,700 crore and Pidilite is worth ₹1.52 lakh crore.

Brands outline barrels.

[Aditya @thefaadguy]

Paytm listed at 2,150 rupees a share in 2021 and fell 27 percent on day one.

Its payments bank lost its licence in April 2026, and in that same financial year the company posted its first full-year profit, 552 Cr on 8,437 Cr of revenue.

It is worth about 1.1 lakh Cr today, and Vijay Shekhar Sharma started it in 2010 with money borrowed at 24 percent interest.

The comeback is the story.

[Aditya @thefaadguy]

Lenskart is worth about 1.2 lakh Cr today, the third most valuable listed startup in India.

About 3,300 stores, roughly 2,600 in India and 700 abroad, with its own factory in Bhiwadi.

FY26 revenue around 9,000 Cr and profit of about 530 Cr, 15 years after Peyush Bansal sold his first contact lens online.

Offline was the moat.

[Aditya @thefaadguy]

Delhi has 21,120 government-recognised startups. Karnataka, the whole state, has 22,600.

Delhi, Haryana and Uttar Pradesh together cross 54,000, and the whole of Maharashtra is at 38,660.

Delhi NCR founders raised about 20,800 Cr across 224 rounds in 2025, second in India and ahead of Mumbai.

The founders are already here.

[Aditya @thefaadguy]

Delhi NCR as a whole has 41 unicorns, second only to Bengaluru's 55, and the two clusters sit on one metro network about an hour apart by road.

Zomato, OYO, Spinny, MakeMyTrip, Urban Company, Policybazaar, Mamaearth, Delhivery and Oxyzo on the Gurugram side. Paytm, PhysicsWallah and Pine Labs on the Noida side.

Two clusters, one city.

[Aditya @thefaadguy]

Delhi NCR has produced 41 unicorns, 8 of them in Noida alone.

Paytm, PhysicsWallah, Pine Labs, Info Edge, RateGain, Moglix, IndiaMART and Innovaccer, all built within one metro network.

4,001 funded companies in the region have raised about 46 billion dollars between them.

Quiet cluster

[Aditya @thefaadguy]

Zomato, Paytm and Delhivery all got their first cheque from an investor based in Delhi NCR.

Info Edge put 4.7 Cr into Zomato in 2010. SAIF Partners led Paytm's first round in 2007. Times Internet wrote 6.6 Cr into Delhivery in 2012.

Info Edge's Zomato stake is worth around 38,000 Cr today and none of the three investors needed a flight to make the call.

Proximity compounds

[Aditya @thefaadguy]

IRCTC books 11 lakh train tickets a day for a network that moves 2.3 crore people. It is worth ₹39,000 crore.

SWIGGY delivers dinner. It is worth ₹75,000 crore.

Convenience beats infrastructure.

[Aditya @thefaadguy]

Zomato’s revenue - ₹54,364 CR
Indian Oil’s revenue - ₹8.86 Lakh CR

Zomato’s valuation - ₹ 3 Lakh CR
Indian Oil’s valuation - ₹1.9 lakh CR

Even when Zomato made 16 times less revenue than Indian Oil, it is almost double of that.

[Aditya @thefaadguy]

Varun Beverages only bottles and sells Pepsi in India. It is worth ₹1.50 lakh crore.

Indian Hotels, which owns the Taj, is worth ₹1.05 lakh crore.

Distribution is the business.

[Aditya @thefaadguy]

Tata’s Westside and Zudio is worth ₹1.66 lakh crore.

While its legacy Tata Tea and Tata Salt, is worth ₹1.08 lakh crore.

The new Tata sells t-shirts.