Indian Startup & Business News Today (29 July 2026): Flipkart, Swiggy, Upgrade, Apple, Boeing & More

India Startup & Business News Today (30 July 2026)

Welcome to today's business news roundup. Here are the latest updates on Indian startups, funding, technology, fintech, aviation, stock market, and global business. Today's highlights include Flipkart, Swiggy, upGrad, Unacademy, Apple, Boeing, Air India, Microsoft, Amazon, and more. 

1. upGrad buying Unacademy – Deal closing in 3 weeks. All-stock deal valued at ₹1,955 crore (slightly lower than earlier talks). Unacademy co-founder Gaurav Munjal continues as CEO. Airlearn (language app) also moves to upGrad. PrepLadder shifted from Chandigarh to Bengaluru. Unacademy, PrepLadder, Airlearn, Graphy all will operate from Bengaluru. Unacademy's investors get one seat on upGrad's board. CCI cleared the deal earlier this month.

Financials (FY25):

· Unacademy revenue: ₹826.3 crore (down 16% YoY)

· upGrad revenue: ₹1,531.7 crore (11 months ended Feb 2026)

· upGrad provisional profit: ₹38.8 crore

· upGrad EBITDA positive: ₹56.9 crore

2. Swiggy's quick-commerce arm, Instamart, has appointed Nandita Sinha as its new Chief Executive Officer. She is the former CEO of Myntra. Her appointment will be effective from August 3.

Beauty and fashion retailer Nykaa has appointed former Instamart Chief Operating Officer Ankit Jain to lead Nykaa Now, its quick commerce business, as the company expands its presence in the rapid delivery segment.

3. BusinessNext, a banking software startup, has raised `$40 million in a Series B funding round. The investment came from ServiceNow Ventures, the venture capital arm of US cloud software company ServiceNow. the fresh capital to strengthen its autonomous banking platform, enhance its Private AI capabilities for financial institutions, and support its expansion into Australia and New Zealand.

4.  Ashneer Grover, former MD and co founder of BharatPe, has launched a new fintech platform called Fund My Staff, which lets employers offer loans to their employees by acting as guarantors, designed for employers who want to support their workforce with credit access and for staff with limited or no credit history who need financing backed by their company's guarantee, and according to the website, employers can onboard staff, set loan amounts, review requests, and approve them, after which the loan is disbursed to the employee who repays through monthly EMIs, with Grover announcing the launch in a LinkedIn post

5. Home services platform Pronto has confirmed that it is continuing and expanding the use of wearable cameras inside customers' homes through Pronto Verified, an opt in service that records service sessions and uses anonymized footage for Al training.

6. Walmart owned Flipkart is getting into online food delivery in India within the next few weeks, where it will compete directly with Zomato and Swiggy, and Flipkart's chief executive Kalyan Krishnamurthy has confirmed this plan according to sources, while the food delivery service will be closely linked with the government backed platform called ONDC, and Flipkart will offer food delivery on its main shopping app as well as test a separate app before expanding the service widely, with sources adding that the company plans to start in Bengaluru at a large scale because customers expect big things from anything that carries the Flipkart name.

7. The Delhi High Court has stopped Unity Small Finance Bank from moving ahead with a plan to increase its authorised share capital, giving temporary relief to BharatPe in an ongoing dispute between the two sides, and according to court proceedings, the bank had proposed raising its authorised capital from Rs 4,000 crore to Rs 4,900 crore to help convert certain warrants into shares before they expired later this year, but BharatPe opposed the move arguing that the proposal could not go ahead without its consent under the shareholders agreement and that the conversion would significantly reduce its stake in the bank, so the High Court has directed the bank not to present the proposal to its board for now while the dispute is being resolved through arbitration, and this order is only temporary and does not decide who is right or wrong in the case, with the dispute being the latest issue between BharatPe and Centrum Group, the two main shareholders of Unity SFB, which was launched in 2021 after a consortium led by BharatPe and Centrum took over the troubled PMC Bank under an RBI backed rescue plan, where BharatPe initially held nearly 49 percent stake, but differences have since emerged over governance and capital decisions, and BharatPe has alleged that the proposed capital restructuring would reduce its ownership without proper approvals, making this case important because it highlights shareholder rights and governance issues in financial institutions created under regulatory reconstruction plans, and the arbitration will now decide if the capital increase and share conversion follow the agreements signed between the parties.

8. B2B food tech startup Urban Harvest is set to raise Rs 341.4 crore or about 35.9 million US dollars in a Series D funding round led by Info Edge, with participation from Sandeep Kapadia, J and A Partners, and several other investors, and the board at Urban Harvest will soon consider approving the issuance of 42,013 Series D compulsorily convertible preference shares at an issue price of Rs 81,260 each to raise this capital

9. Electric commercial vehicle maker Omega Seiki Mobility has raised Rs 50 crore in a funding round from Securocorp Securities, Sangeeta Pareekh, Saket Aggarwal Family Office, and Vanshika Sharma, and the company said in a press release that the money will be used to expand manufacturing capacity, strengthen research and development, enhance its nationwide dealer and service network, and speed up the rollout of next generation electric mobility solutions.

10. Venture capital firm Inflexor Ventures has announced the first close of its third fund called Inflexor Technology Discovery Fund, securing commitments of Rs 400 crore against its target of Rs 1,250 crore, with the fund being anchored by the Self Reliant India Fund, HDFC Asset Management Company and HDFC AMC Select AIF FoF, along with participation from international institutional investors, and Fund III will invest in science, engineering and technology startups at the pre Series A and Series A stages, with the firm planning to write initial cheques of Rs 15 to 45 crore and build a portfolio of 22 to 25 companies, while according to Inflexor Ventures, the new fund will place greater emphasis on Series A investments but continue its sector agnostic approach focused on technology driven businesses with high barriers to entry, and Fund III has already begun deploying capital and expects to announce its first investments in the coming weeks, with the firm founded by Venkat Vallabhaneni, Jatin Desai and Pratip Mazumdar managing around Rs 1,300 crore in assets and having backed more than 25 startups including Atomberg, Bellatrix Aerospace, CloudSEK, CredFlow, Kale Logistics and PlayShifu.

11. Global student living technology company House of Student has raised 2 million US dollars in a seed round through a combination of equity and debt, with the round being co led by Saltwater Sutra and Nirmitsu Inspirational Ventures, along with participation from Gautam Verlekar, Glen Fernandes, Richard McCallum, Ali Moosa, and existing investor Unilodgers, and the company said in a press release that the fresh capital will be used to drive product innovation, expand housing supply, strengthen Al capabilities, and support global expansion.

12. Biomass briquette and pellet manufacturer Walbha Industries has raised Rs 10 crore in a strategic investment from circular economy company Recykal, marking Recykal's entry into the bioenergy value chain and expanding its focus beyond waste management to biomass based industrial fuel, and the partnership aims to connect Walbha's biomass production with Recykal's network of more than 620 brands and manufacturers to create a demand channel for biomass fuel.

13. Bengaluru based deep tech company Yaanendriya, which builds indigenous sensor, navigation, and control technologies for mobile robots and critical applications, has raised Rs 15 crore in a seed funding round led by Piper Serica, and the company said in a press release that the fresh funds will be used to strengthen research and development, accelerate product development, and expand its portfolio of high precision navigation systems for mission critical environments.

14. Boeing reported a larger than expected quarterly loss on Tuesday after taking a 280 million dollar charge on its troubled Air Force One replacement program, which contributed to a 428 million dollar net loss for the second quarter, and the charge was due to higher engineering costs to ensure it delivers the two delayed presidential planes in 2028, while the core loss per share of 76 cents was worse than analysts' expected loss of 30 cents but narrower than the 1 dollar 24 cents loss a year earlier, yet despite these numbers Boeing's share price rose by 4.9 percent as investors responded positively to the company's steady production improvements and increased free cash flow, with the company recording 631 million dollars in free cash flow compared to negative 200 million dollars in the same quarter last year, and Boeing is maintaining its full year guidance of 1 billion to 3 billion dollars in free cash flow which would be its first positive annual result since 2023.

Boeing is currently increasing 737 MAX output from 42 to 47 jets a month with plans to reach 52 by early next year and 57 later, though CEO Kelly Ortberg cautioned that hitting 57 will require stronger supplier performance especially in wing assembly, while on the 787 program engine deliveries from GE Aerospace remain the main hurdle to reaching 10 aircraft per month and Boeing is working closely with GE on a recovery plan, and increasing output of both programs is critical to paying down the company's nearly 26 billion dollars in net debt which would give it room to develop a new jetliner to compete with Airbus in the 2030s, with CFO Jay Malave expecting both jet programs to be as profitable by 2030 as they were in 2018 before the crises began, and Boeing Commercial Airplanes delivered 171 aircraft in the quarter its highest since 2018 with operating margin improving to negative 2.7 percent from negative 11.9 percent, while the defense and space division's margin improved to negative 0.2 percent and received Pentagon approval for low rate production of its T-7 Red Hawk trainer and MQ-25 drone, but Boeing Global Services margin fell to 18.1 percent from 19.9 percent due to higher costs and the sale of its Jeppesen business last year.

15. Apple's market value briefly crossed 5 trillion dollars for the first time on Tuesday, making it only the second company ever to achieve that milestone after Nvidia, and its shares were up 0.2 percent at 337.7 dollars giving it a market cap of 4.96 trillion dollars, with the rally being driven by strong product demand and Apple's decision to stay out of the costly AI spending race while relying on Google's technology for new services, and Apple also launched a device leasing program through Klarna with monthly payments starting at 17.99 dollars for an iPhone, while the stock has jumped 24 percent so far this year outperforming other Big Tech stocks, and Apple is set to report third quarter earnings on Thursday with analysts expecting a more than 15 percent jump in revenue.

16. Hindustan Unilever reported a 4 percent drop in quarterly profit to 26.31 billion rupees or about 274.9 million dollars as commodity inflation from the Middle East conflict pushed up costs, while the company raised prices by 5 percent and volumes grew 5 percent helping sales from continuing operations rise 10 percent to 165.14 billion rupees, but its standalone core earnings margin contracted 40 basis points to 22.8 percent, although it maintained its medium term forecast for consolidated core earnings margin of 22.5 to 23.5 percent, and shares fell around 7 percent to 2,028.20 rupees making it the biggest loser on the Nifty 50 index, with CEO Priya Nair saying the company will focus on volume led growth despite margin pressure

17. Air India's turnaround could take up to ten years, longer than earlier planned, because the airline is facing problems like closed air spaces, high fuel costs from the West Asia conflict, and the effects of a deadly plane crash last year, while supply chain issues, old systems, and the need to hire and train more staff are also slowing things down, and this new timeline is different from the five year plan announced in September 2022 by CEO Campbell Wilson, who will leave on September 30 and no successor has been named yet, while the airline's net loss widened to 222.38 billion rupees or about 2.32 billion dollars for the year ended March 2026, compared to 108.59 billion rupees a year earlier, and even though India's airline industry has recovered well after the pandemic, profits are still under pressure from high costs, supply problems, and tough competition on prices.

18. India's central bank said on Tuesday that the Delhi High Court has ordered the winding up of Paytm Payments Bank and appointed a former State Bank of India executive named Girikumar M Nair as the official liquidator, marking the final step in closing the bank after a long regulatory crackdown, and the Reserve Bank of India had cancelled the banking licence of Paytm Payments Bank on April 24 and later approached the court seeking winding up proceedings, with the RBI saying at that time that the bank's affairs were run in a way that harmed the bank and its depositors, and Nair will oversee the liquidation process and exercise all powers of the bank's board from July 8, while Paytm Payments Bank was once India's largest payments bank and a key part of the digital payments ecosystem after getting a licence in 2015, and a payments bank is a type of lender that can accept deposits but cannot give loans, but the bank came under regulatory scrutiny in March 2022 when the RBI ordered it to stop onboarding new customers due to supervisory concerns, and in January 2024 the RBI barred the bank from accepting fresh deposits because of ongoing compliance issues.

19. Palo Alto based startup Fish Audio, which offers AI generated voice models with more than 15,000 natural language controls, has raised 52 million dollars in a seed round led by Coreline Ventures and Capital Today with participation from 359 Capital, Parable, Play Time, Alphalist Partners, Bayhouse Ventures, Carya Venture Partners, and HF0, and since launching last year the startup now has more than 8 million people using its open source or hosted versions and generates annual recurring revenue of 21 million dollars, while the company started as a small project by former Nvidia researcher Shijia Liao who was frustrated by non expressive synthetic voices and trained a voice generation model on a single GPU which he then open sourced, and the Fish Speech repository on GitHub now has more than 31,000 stars and is used by indie developers, video game designers, and creators.

20. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella has doubled down on his earlier warning to businesses that use AI, saying on CNN's Fareed Zakaria GPS that companies which rely completely on proprietary AI labs for their AI needs will ultimately not survive, and when asked about what constitutes sharing too much with an AI model provider, Nadella said businesses need to be careful about everything they hand over from their data to their prompts, while calling for a setup where every time you use the model all the metadata around it is retained by you so that you could use all of that to train perhaps your own weights or your own open model, with weights being a model's trained parameters essentially its brain, and his point was that companies should hold on to their own usage data so they can eventually build a model of their own, adding that any firm that does not have this control will not remain a firm because they have essentially outsourced their thinking.

21. Amazon has filed an application with the Federal Communications Commission for a license to operate a new network of 5,105 satellites that would provide service to mobile phones, with plans to start launching them in 2028, and this move comes several months after Amazon acquired the satellite operations of Globalstar, which provides emergency connectivity to Apple iPhones and Internet of Things devices, while the filing revealed the company's plans to use Globalstar's radio spectrum to expand these offerings and integrate them with Leo, Amazon's broadband internet satellite network.

22. Flipkart group's logistics arm Ekart is opening its nationwide delivery network to third party businesses, giving companies access to the infrastructure that powers the ecommerce giant's operations, and the move will be backed by a franchise model and dedicated warehousing services to expand fulfilment across India, while Ekart currently reaches more than 95 percent of Indian pincodes across over 80 product categories.