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Hello,

The Hindenburg haunting isn’t over yet.

The US-based short-seller alleged that SEBI chief Madhabi Puri Buch and her husband Dhaval Buch had stakes in obscure offshore funds used in the Adani Group’s alleged money siphoning scandal. 

However, the SEBI chief has refuted all allegations. Calling the insinuations about their investments “malicious and motivated,” she clarified that their investment in the fund mentioned by Hindenburg Research was made in 2015 when they were both private citizens residing in Singapore. 

SEBI also released a statement, advising investors to remain calm and exercise due diligence. The market regulator also asserted that it has completed 23 out of 24 investigations into the Adani Group.

Wealth management entity 360 ONE, formerly called IIFL Wealth Management, also clarified the couple’s investments were less than 1.5% of the total inflow into the IPE-Plus Fund 1 and no investors had any involvement in investment decisions. It also said that the fund had not made any investments in Adani Group shares.

ICYMI: A timeline of the Hindenburg-Adani saga.

Oh, and don’t forget to grab your tickets for the 15th edition of TechSparks Bengaluru, to be held on September 26-28!

In today’s newsletter, we will talk about 

• Empowering banks to help SMBs
• Starting up at the age of 62

Here’s your trivia for today: What is the modern standard distance for a marathon?

Startup

Empowering banks to help SMBs

Mintoak Innovation empowers small businesses and merchants through its modular, cloud-native, API-first payments platform. It enables banks to reach out to the merchant ecosystem, offering digital payments and financial services.

Payments platform:

• Mintoak’s platform integrates with the existing infrastructure of banks to empower merchants with financial services. Its suite of value-added services includes payments, lending, and customer engagement.
• Mintoak’s revenue streams include licensing fees from banks, commissions based on transaction throughput, fees for distributing financial products, and charges for value-added services.
• The seven-year-old startup claims to be serving over 3 million merchants with leading bank partners such as HDFC Bank, Axis Bank, SBI, and YES Bank in India, and international markets such as Africa and the Middle East.

Woman Entrepreneur

Starting up at the age of 62

At the age of 62, Usha Shrotriya is giving wings to her entrepreneurial dreams. She gave a new twist to the laddus she’d perfected over the years and gave birth to Mama Nourish and her laddu bars. 

Preserving recipes:

• Shrotriya was both determined and adamant about turning laddus into a laddu bar. She worked for days on end to get the right proportions and hit success after around 90 trials.
• While Mama Nourish owns the recipes, its manufacturing is outsourced to an FSSAI- and FDA-certified third-party facility, with Shrotriya monitoring quality checks at every stage. 
• The brand has also introduced the Mini Laddubar—a bite-sized bar to fulfil sweet cravings after meals. The price points for the bigger bar starts at Rs 70 and the mini bar is priced at Rs 40.

News & updates

• Loan margins: Industry stalwarts such as Ares Management Corp and Blackstone Inc have been charging less for private credit for most of this year, according to data compiled by Bloomberg, as they try to snatch business away from the syndicated loan market. But that strategy may change after recession fears have risen amid a slew of worrying economic reports.
• U-turn: Turkey reinstated access to Instagram on Saturday night, after more than a week of the app being blocked nationwide. The Information and Communication Technologies Authority barred access to Instagram on August 2 without providing a specific reason. Government officials later said the ban was imposed because the social media platform failed to abide by Turkish laws.
• Mid-air hack: There has been a 400% surge in GPS spoofing incidents affecting commercial airliners in recent months, according to aviation advisory body OPSGROUP. Spoofing is a form of digital attack which can send commercial airliners off course.

What you should watch out for

• Market debut: Last week, Unicommerce and FirstCry attracted significant investor interest during their IPOs. Unicommerce became the most subscribed startup IPO this year yet, with its issue subscribed over 168 times driven by strong demand from non-institutional and retail investors. Meanwhile, FirstCry parent Brainbees Solutions’ IPO, which received a dull response on its initial two days of subscription, saw its IPO subscribed 12.2 times on day 3, mainly pulled by bids from qualified institutional investors. Both companies are likely to be listed on the stock market on August 13.
• Tech-prise: At the Made by Google event this week, Google is expected to unveil a bunch of new products and release Android 15, which brings several new features and security and privacy enhancements. It is all set to reveal the Pixel 9 series, including its latest foldable phone, the Pixel 9 Pro Fold. It may also release AI-powered features similar to Microsoft’s Windows Recall feature, which makes everything you do on your phone searchable.

What is the modern standard distance for a marathon?

Answer: 42.195 km. It is roughly the distance between the Greek cities of Athens and Marathon.

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