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★ Lead Story

1d ago · 2 min read

Suzuki has passed Honda to become Japan's second-biggest carmaker

Japan's carmakers published their April-to-September global sales on October 30, and Suzuki came second. It sold 1,824,006 cars worldwide in those six months, up 19.9%, and a record first half for the company. A year earlier it was fourth.

Honda sold 1,661,569 cars, down 4%, held back by a 50% fall in China. Toyota is still far ahead at 5,059,014 including Lexus, but that figure is down 4.0% and is its first first-half decline in both sales and production in two years.

Suzuki holds about 40% of India's passenger car market, so the 19.9% is largely an Indian number. The read is that one carmaker built its volume where cars are still being bought for the first time, while the other two built theirs in China, where Honda's sales halved and Toyota's fell 25.1%.

Toyota's North American sales rose 1.8% and its European sales rose 1.4%, both on hybrid demand. Outside India and outside hybrids, there is very little growth anywhere in these numbers.

Second place among Japanese carmakers is a ranking, not a profit pool. Suzuki's 18.24 lakh cars are mostly small cars sold at Indian prices, and Honda's 16.6 lakh include a much larger share of higher-priced vehicles in North America. On revenue per car the two are not close, and Suzuki has not claimed they are.

What the volume does buy is bargaining power. A carmaker shipping a fifth more units than last year can hold suppliers to volume pricing, and perhaps that matters more to Maruti Suzuki's cost line over the next two years than the league table does.

The risk sits in the same place as the growth. Suzuki's position depends on India staying the one large market where entry-level cars still sell, and on its roughly 40% share surviving cheaper electric models from companies that have no small-petrol business to protect.

Today's Top 5

5 stories

Godrej Consumer · 3d ago

Godrej Consumer grew revenue 19% and profit 14%

Godrej Consumer Products reported its September quarter with sales up 19% and net profit up 14% to Rs 523 crore. Underlying volume growth was 8%. India's standalone sales grew 13%.

EBITDA grew 12%, which is slower than the 19% on the top line. Price and mix, rather than volume, are doing most of the revenue work, and the company named a subdued monsoon and input-cost inflation as the reasons.

Home Care grew 19% in value on air fresheners and home care liquids, and the company says it gained share in household insecticides. Personal Care grew 8%, with soaps holding steady through price increases and smaller pack sizes.

The gap between 19% sales growth and 12% EBITDA growth is the number to watch. On these figures the company is buying its growth with margin, which is a reasonable trade while input costs are rising and a difficult one to reverse later.

The international business is carrying more than its size suggests. Indonesia grew 20% and the Africa, USA and Middle East cluster grew 40% in rupee terms, a seventh straight double-digit quarter there. If India's volume stays at 8%, that cluster is where the next few quarters of growth perhaps have to come from.

PB Fintech · 2d ago

PB Fintech's revenue grew 35% and its profit margin reached 9%

PB Fintech, which runs Policybazaar and Paisabazaar, reported September-quarter operating revenue of Rs 2,178 crore, up 35%, and profit of Rs 192 crore, up 43%. The profit margin moved from 8% to 9%.

Total insurance premium across the group was Rs 9,385 crore, up 38%. New protection premium, the health and term business, grew 42%. Lending disbursal grew 22%, its fifth consecutive quarter of sequential growth.

For the half year, revenue was Rs 4,066 crore, up 37%, and profit was Rs 355 crore, up 62%.

Premium grew 38% while the company's own revenue grew 35%. On these numbers the commission it keeps per rupee of premium is roughly flat or slightly lower, which suggests the growth is coming from selling more policies rather than from charging more to place them.

The faster-growing line is also the better one. Health and term premium at 42% is the business insurers pay the most to acquire, and it is growing faster than the book as a whole. Lending, at 22%, is now the slow half of the company.

Gig Economy · 2d ago

India has set up a national board for gig workers, and aggregators will fund it

On October 30 the Labour Ministry notified the National Social Security Board for Unorganised Workers and Gig and Platform Workers, under the Code on Social Security, 2020. It is chaired by the Union Labour Minister and seats the Centre, the states, aggregator companies, employers, unions, gig worker associations and civil society together.

The board recommends welfare schemes, advises the government on running the Code, monitors existing schemes and reviews how states keep records and spend the fund. It must meet at least three times a year.

The Code came into force on November 21, 2025, consolidating nine labour laws, and it recognises gig and platform workers as employees eligible for notified welfare schemes. Eligible aggregators must contribute 1% to 2% of annual turnover, subject to a cap.

A levy set on turnover rather than on profit is the part that matters commercially. Food delivery and quick commerce run on contribution margins measured in single-digit percentages of order value, so 1% to 2% of turnover is a meaningful share of what is left, in a way it would not be for a company earning a 20% margin.

How meaningful is not yet knowable. The cap on the contribution has not been made public, and until it is, the cost to Swiggy, Zomato, Blinkit, Zepto, Ola, Uber, Amazon or Flipkart cannot be estimated honestly. What the notification does settle is that the bill exists and that a standing body now has the job of spending it.

Boba Bhai · 1d ago

Boba Bhai grew revenue 139% and its loss grew faster

Boba Bhai, the bubble tea and snacks chain, reported FY26 revenue from operations of Rs 68 crore, up 139% from Rs 28.44 crore. Food and beverage sales were Rs 67.26 crore of that, about 99%.

Total expenses rose to Rs 90.4 crore from Rs 39 crore, and the net loss widened to Rs 21.8 crore from Rs 9.96 crore. Materials cost Rs 25 crore, employee benefits Rs 13.5 crore, advertising Rs 13 crore and platform commission Rs 11.44 crore.

The company runs about 100 stores across eight cities with 188 employees, raised Rs 40 crore in March 2026, and plans to enter 10 more cities and reach 150 to 200 stores by the end of FY27.

Commission of Rs 11.44 crore against Rs 67.26 crore of food and beverage sales means roughly 17 paise in every rupee of sales goes to the delivery platforms. For a chain whose product is a cold drink that travels badly, that is a high price to pay for reach, and it is growing faster than sales.

The constraint is visible in the cash line. Cash and bank balances ended FY26 at Rs 2.85 crore, down from Rs 24.07 crore, against a plan to add 50 to 100 more stores. On these numbers the expansion needs another round, and the Rs 40 crore raised in March is unlikely to cover it.

Yulu · 1d ago

Yulu's revenue grew 18.6% and its loss narrowed to Rs 96.6 crore

Yulu, which rents electric two-wheelers to delivery riders, reported FY26 revenue of Rs 281 crore, up 18.6% from Rs 237 crore, and a loss of Rs 96.6 crore, down 23% from Rs 126 crore.

The headline growth understates the core business. Rental revenue grew 30.3% to Rs 262 crore and is now more than 93% of operating revenue, while sale of goods fell 59.3% and manpower services fell 57%.

Total expenses grew only 7.4% to Rs 377 crore. EBITDA margin improved from minus 15.41% to minus 5.89%.

Revenue growing 18.6% against expenses growing 7.4% is the first time Yulu's numbers have shown that gap clearly, and it is what moved the EBITDA margin nearly ten percentage points. The company has not grown its way there so much as stopped growing the lines that cost money, and the two shrinking revenue lines are part of that choice.

The scale it is aiming for is a different problem. Yulu runs about 50,000 vehicles and wants 200,000 by 2028 across roughly 20 more cities. It raised $93 million in August and ended the year with Rs 11.51 crore of cash, so a fleet four times the current one is a financing question before it is an operating one.

The demand is also narrow. Gig workers are the customer, which ties Yulu's rental volume to how many delivery orders the quick-commerce companies are paying riders to carry.

⚡ 30-Second Scan

MeitY has proposed a consent-based framework for AI training data called DEPA and built with the think tank iSPIRT, under which banks, hospitals and government agencies would register anonymised datasets and startups would train on them inside confidential clean rooms without seeing the raw data.

Hero MotoCorp opened a four-day festive offer on November 1 with zero-interest finance and cashback of up to Rs 10,000 across its range.

Smartworks swung to a Rs 26 crore profit in the September quarter on revenue of Rs 591 crore, up 39% from a year earlier.

Sourced from public reporting; analysis by The Insight Labs.

Sources: Autocar Professional, Godrej Consumer Products Q2 FY27 results, PB Fintech Q2 FY27 results, Ministry of Labour & Employment notification, via Inc42, Indian Retailer, Entrackr.

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