Good Glamm Breaks Up, Paytm Turns Profitable: Indian Startup Scene Reboots
From lender-enforced brand sales to fintech profit milestones, India’s startup space is in a sharp recalibration phase
Things are breaking and building at the same time in India’s startup corridors. The Good Glamm Group, once the poster child for D2C dominance, is now being gutted brand by brand under lender pressure. Just days after, Paytm delivered its first real profit, and not the kind inflated by accounting gymnastics. If you’re a founder or investor in India right now, you’re either sweating or strategizing. Maybe both.
Good Glamm Crumbles: What Growth at All Costs Really Costs
Here’s the hard truth: Good Glamm’s breakup wasn’t a surprise to insiders. The writing was on the wall when salary delays started showing up and vendors whispered about unpaid dues. Still, the speed at which it all unraveled? Brutal.
CEO Darpan Sanghvi confirmed what many suspected. The group is no longer trying to survive as a unified brand house. It’s done. Instead, the lenders, tired of playing the waiting game, have triggered charges against individual brands. ScoopWhoop, Sirona, MyGlamm: they’re all up for grabs. No more “content to commerce” narrative. Just liquidation, piece by piece.
What hurts more is how fast the hype turned sour. This was a startup that raised big money from names like Prosus and Warburg Pincus, then went on a wild acquisition spree. It looked clever at the time. Consolidate. Scale fast. Own the funnel. But when the consumer demand dipped and the overheads climbed, the cracks split wide open.
What’s left now is fire-sale M&A. Strategic buyers will circle, pick up individual brands, and probably get decent deals. For some, it’s an opportunity. For others, a wake-up call: a reminder that flashy decks don’t cover weak fundamentals.
Paytm: Finally, A Profit That Holds
And then there’s Paytm. For a company that’s lived under the microscope since its IPO stumble, this quarter finally brought some redemption. A net profit of ₹122 crore for Q1 FY26. Not a one-time fluke. Actual profit, from core operations.
Revenue jumped 28 percent. Financial services more than doubled. Payments kept growing. But the real story? Cost control. They slashed marketing spend by over 50 percent. Automated like hell. Headcount costs came down. EBITDA came in at ₹72 crore, and this time, it wasn’t propped up by asset sales.
The stock jumped to a 52-week high before cooling off. Investors want to see consistency now. But at least the narrative is shifting. For years, Paytm carried the tag of over-promised and under-delivered. This might be the quarter that turns that tide.
It’s also a quiet lesson in the power of persistence. They got burned post IPO. Got grilled by regulators. Lost leadership. But didn’t fold. Instead, they restructured, recalibrated, and went lean.
SaaS Signals and What’s Brewing Below the Surface
Away from the headlines, something else is happening: India’s SaaS sector is maturing, for real. Names like DriveU and Milky Mist are quietly profitable. They’re not chasing media mentions. They’re building ops-first, revenue-steady businesses. And that’s catching attention.
IPO murmurs are getting louder across mid cap tech and fintech firms. The mood is different now. Nobody’s pitching a “burn to scale” model. VCs are asking about profit margins. Global investors, once skeptical, are circling again, but only for businesses that show they can survive without constant cash infusions.
It’s not sexy. But it’s solid. And right now, solid is winning.
A Market Growing Up, the Hard Way
Let’s not sugarcoat this. The Indian startup space is in the middle of a gut check. Good Glamm’s downfall is raw. Paytm’s profit, overdue. But both point to the same reality: the ecosystem is growing up. Not just in size, but in sense.
If you’re building today, here’s the takeaway: scale is worthless without control. And cash flow beats valuation, every damn time. It’s not about survival of the loudest anymore. It’s survival of the leanest, the most focused, the ones who know when to build and when to shut up and listen to their numbers.
This next wave? It won’t be about unicorns. It’ll be about businesses that actually know how to make money, and keep it.
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Aanya is an AI strategist from Bangalore who simplifies automation and SaaS for founders building tech-first startups globally.
