Cred scooped up close to a billion dollars this week from Meta. But what got a lot more attention was founder Kunal Shah’s own transition to Meta’s global leadership. Aside from Cred, there was plenty more action this week, notably on the M&A front, starting with iMerit’s quiet acquisition. We also take a closer look at Hyrox, the extreme fitness race and social phenomenon that L Catterton is reported to be circling. Dive into Edition #37.
New to the The Runway? Subscribe for a comprehensive view of the deals, strategies and people shaping private equity and venture capital in India every week. Find us on LinkedIn and WhatsApp if you want to keep track of updates on future editions.
Lead
EXL Buys iMerit. MoEngage Scoops Up Aampe. Honasa Buys Into Nutraceuticals
Metiabruz in Kolkata isn’t a place you’d expect to find the back-office of a Silicon Valley AI model training company. Located in the city’s historic Garden Reach neighbourhood, it’s known for its small scale garment factories and largely low-income population. Back in 2012, it became the location of choice for San Jose, California-headquartered iMerit’s earliest data annotation centre with the express intent of bringing marginalised citizens into the mainstream workforce.
On Wednesday, iMerit agreed to be acquired by Nasdaq-listed business process management company EXLService Holdings.
The $310 million acquisition is being structured as an upfront consideration of $170 million and an additional $140 million paid out over two years, subject to achieving specified milestones.
The deal delivers an exit for British International Investment (BII). The UK government-backed impact investor led a $20 million Series B round in the company in 2020. It was joined by iMerit’s existing investors Khosla Ventures, Omidyar Network and Dell Foundation. The three entered the company in 2015 with a $3.5 million Series A.
What does iMerit do and what’s EXL buying?
Shaped in the classic mould of the back-office operations that have fuelled India’s nearly $300 billion information technology (IT) services industry, iMerit, simply put, trains AI models on behalf of other enterprises.
Its proprietary Ango platform evaluates how well a model reasons through a problem and probes its for weaknesses. The company’s Scholars network, a roster of external experts such as doctors, scientists, engineers and linguists, checks the model’s responses and helps fix what’s wrong.
Founded by Radha Ramaswami Basu, a former Hewlett-Packard executive, and her husband, Dipak Basu, a former Cisco manager, the company today operates a dozen-odd delivery centers in India across cities such as Ranchi, Bhubaneswar, Shillong, Visakhapatnam, Hubballi and Kolkata. It also has operations in Bhutan.
EXL’s chief financial officer Maurizio Nicolelli told analysts this week that iMerit’s preliminary, unaudited revenues for the year ended March 2026 was approximately $59 million.
CEO Rohit Kapoor said, on the same analysts’ call, that roughly 3,600 of iMerit’s full-time employees would move to EXL as part of the acquisition, working across clients that include large AI labs building general-purpose models, “the Mag 7” (Wall Street jargon for the seven big US technology companies that dominate the bourses), self driving car companies and healthcare providers.
Apart from iMerit, two other M&A deals worth noting from this week:
MoEngage-Aampe: SaaS company MoEngage acquired Aampe, a San Francisco-based AI infrastructure company that assigns automated decision-making agents to enterprise customers. The financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Aampe, according to reports, raised about $28 million across three funding rounds over its lifetime from Peak XV Partners, Z47 and Theory Ventures. Mumbai-based Z47 is also an investor in MoEngage, entering at the company’s Series B in 2018.
MoEngage last raised $280 million in a Series F round last year from an investor group that included Goldman Sachs, A91 Partners, ChrysCapital and Dragon Funds. The Aampe acquisition comes months after MoEngage secured the National Company Law Tribunal’s approval for a reverse merger under which MoEngage Inc., the company’s Delaware-incorporated US parent, will merge into MoEngage India Private Limited, its Bangalore-based Indian subsidiary. Reports frame the move as preparation for a potential IPO in India.
Honasa-Fluence: Beauty and personal care brand Mamaearth’s parent Honasa Consumer acquired a 58% stake in Fluence Pharma, a nutraceuticals company. Following the acquisition, Delhi-based Honasa will establish a subsidiary, Honasa Health, to cater to the nutraceuticals market, it said in a regulatory filing. Fluence Pharma offers OTC supplements for complex hair and skin conditions.
Off-Lead | By Murali K Menon
Sweat Equity
Word on the street is that L Catterton wants a bite of Hyrox.
Hyrox is a structured global race format – eight runs of one kilometre interspersed with eight functional workout stations – that has grown from a Hamburg startup in 2017 to a $130 million revenue business operating across more than 30 countries.
It’s gaining momentum in India, too, and not just in our big cities. Its most recent event in Bengaluru earlier this year pulled in 8,200 participants from 240 towns. Hyrox’s Mumbai event in September – to be held over four days and with about 15,000 participants – sold out in May. The company expects 1.3 million athletes competing across 85 cities globally.
Hyrox is also, increasingly, a sport, with participants across the world – your cousin in Chicago, that couple you know in Berlin – competing against each other on a global leaderboard. And it is becoming something of a social phenomenon. Earlier this week, Business Insider described Hyrox as “the hot new dating scene”, chronicling the rise of Hyrox blind dates and fitness-first matchmaking.
In startup circles, meanwhile, Hyrox is increasingly being compared to padel – another activity that has evolved into an informal networking venue. One LinkedIn post even coined a term for the phenomenon: “sweatworking”.
So, it’s perhaps not surprising that it has caught the attention of private equity, which has been pouring money into sport, especially in the recent past. Otro Capital raised $1.2 billion for the largest dedicated sports buyout fund ever. KKR acquired Arctos Capital, which holds stakes in professional sports franchises, for $1.4 billion, while Apollo is building a $5 billion sports investment platform. And we’re all aware of the billion-dollar buyouts in the IPL. (If you are looking for some numbers, participation sport is expected to touch $379 billion by 2030, according to industry intelligence provider MarketResearch.com.)
For a luxury-focused consumer private equity firm backed by LVMH, Hyrox sits at the confluence of sport and premium consumption, an intersection increasingly occupied by luxury brands themselves. Gucci recently announced a $150 million title sponsorship with Alpine F1, while Louis Vuitton is now the title partner for the Monaco Grand Prix.
Hyrox, if L Catterton does move, would represent something different in this landscape — a bet not on a franchise or a league, but on a sport that has built itself from the ground up, with no teams, no owners, and no broadcast rights. Instead, it is built on people paying to compete, alongside sponsorships from brands such as Puma.
Could it go the way of CrossFit, once worth billions and now being dressed up for sale by Berkshire Partners? Possibly. For now, investors appear willing to wager that Hyrox is building a sport rather than merely riding a fitness trend.
The Week in Deals
Meta’s Bet on Cred; Bessemer Leads Two Deals
At over 800 million monthly active users, India is Meta-owned messaging platform WhatsApp’s largest market. But it has struggled to monetise that user base, notably on the payments front, lagging rivals such as Google Pay and PhonePe. Meta hopes to rectify that with the induction of Cred founder Kunal Shah into its global leadership team as head of WhatsApp.
Alongside, Meta is investing $900 million in Cred in its Series H round for a reported 20% stake.
The transaction, a combination of primary and secondary share purchases, values the Bangalore-based fintech at Rs 43,239 crore ($4.5 billion) – a downward revision from its peak at $6.4 billion but higher than the $3.5 billion it was valued at when it raised last raised capital.
Prior to the Meta round, Cred raised over $1 billion from investors such as GIC, Peak XV Partners, and Tiger Global. The secondary portion, reported at about $400 million, creates exits for some of those investors.
Founded in 2018, Cred is a members-only club that rewards consumers for strong credit scores. Members have access to services such as loans, payments, insurance and wealth management.
Square Yards raised Rs 900 crore ($95 million) in an equity and debt round. EAAA Alternatives brought in Rs 600 crore ($63 million) through its Special Situations Strategy. Muzinich & Co anchored the debt component. The Gurugram-based proptech platform offers consumers solutions across the stack from search and discovery to transactions and property management.
Recykal raised $23 million in a bridge round, which was a combination of primary and secondary capital. The company’s existing investors and a group of new family offices invested in the round, it said in a statement. According to the Times of India, new investors in the round include Biological E and the family office of Biological E managing director Mahima Datla. Returning investors include 360 One Asset and Pidilite Industries vice chairman Ajay Parekh’s family office. Early investor Circulate Capital exited its investment completely, scoring a 5x return, the Hyderabad-based waste management company said in the statement.
AllHome, a platform for sourcing interior materials for homes, raised $21 million in a Series B round led by Bessemer Venture Partners. The round, according to reports, values the startup at Rs 2,000 crore (about $211 million). The Mumbai-based startup was founded in 2025 by the founders of online pharmaceuticals and wellness products app PharmEasy.
Mitigata raised $15 million in a Series B round led by Bessemer Venture Partners. Existing investors Nexus Venture Partners, Titan Capital and WEH Ventures joined the round. The Bangalore-based company is building a AI-native cyber resilience platform that enables enterprises to combine cyber insurance, security operations, compliance automation and incident response in a single decision layer.
Bodycraft Salon Spa and Clinic raised $12.7 million from Singularity AMC. The Bangalore-based company provides hair and skin care, cosmetology and wellness services across 70 offline centers in Bangalore, Mumbai, Gurgaon, Delhi and other cities.
SuperLiving, a Bangalore-based startup that operates a lifestyle services app, raised $7 million in a Series A round led by Lightspeed. Existing investors Kae Capital and All in Capital joined the round.
Sub $5 million deals: Managed vacation homes operator SaffronStays raised $3.5 million from Infinity Ventures. Deep tech startup Qosmic raised $3.3 million led by Prosus and Accel. GPS-enabled smart locks solutions provider Ikin Global raised $2 million led by Unicorn India Ventures. Toys and learning products startup LiLLBUD raised $0.6 million led by Zeropearl VC. AI-powered shopping assistant Zave raised $0.5 million led by Inflection Point Ventures.
In overseas funding deals, Premji Invest led a $190 million Series A-1 round in Santa Clara, California-based AI networking infrastructure company Upscale AI. The round valued the company at $2 billion. NVIDIA, Salesforce Ventures, Seligman Ventures and Temasek joined as new investors. Peak XV Partners joined San Francisco-based AI-led marketing platform JustAI’s $17.5 million Series A round and New York-based employee management platform Warp’s $60 million Series B. Sherlocks AI, a Palo Alto, California-based startup that offers AI-led SRE incident management solutions, raised $0.8 million from SenseAI Ventures and Uppekkha.
Submit a deal for The Runway Briefing by replying to this email or write to us at hello@therunwaynews.com.
Recco | Notes on Culture, Craft and the Considered Life
The Notebook That Refuses to Die
Chances are you’ll never actually use one. Your phone already remembers your appointments, stores your shopping lists and takes down your notes. But there is something undeniably old-world and deeply satisfying about putting pen to paper, especially when the pen is good and the paper even better. Which brings us to this week’s recommendation: a notebook from Smythson.
Founded on London’s Bond Street, Smythson has been making fine stationery for well over a century. Its notebooks are distinguished by their featherweight paper — remarkably thin yet resistant to ink bleed — and have found admirers ranging from royalty to politicians, writers and artists.
They’re also expensive. A simple notebook starts at around ₹5,000, while leather-bound editions can cost considerably more. The price reflects the materials and craftsmanship: featherweight paper, meticulous binding and supple leather covers. You’re also paying for nearly 140 years of heritage and the fact that, in a world where most notebooks are disposable, Smythson continues to make them as objects intended to be kept.
Will it make you a better writer? Probably not. But if you’ve been looking for an excuse to put your phone aside, uncap a good fountain pen and enjoy the simple act of writing, few notebooks do it with quite as much elegance.
Recco is a column by Murali K Menon. Murali has spent a career paying close attention to how things are made, where they come from, and why some of them endure. Every edition, one recommendation: a maker, an object, a place, a practice.
Thank you for reading The Runway. We’d love to get your feedback. Drop us a line at hello@therunwaynews.com or just reply to this email.