I came across the news of Comet raising close to ₹100 Cr and, frankly, the first thing that caught my attention wasn't the fundraise. It was the valuation! A sneaker brand founded in 2023, doing around ₹29 Cr of revenue in FY25 and still loss-making, is now valued at roughly ₹535 Cr post-money . That's around 18x FY25 revenue. Wow!! Now, I am not saying the valuation is wrong. But it immediately made me wonder: What exactly are investors buying? Because they certainly aren't buying the business as it exists today. And I think that's where the interesting part of this story begins. Let's look at the numbers first Comet did around ₹7.3 Cr in FY24. That went up to roughly ₹29 Cr in FY25. That's fantastic growth. But FY25 loss was around ₹4.4 Cr. So this isn't a story of a highly profitable business raising capital to accelerate an already proven model. It is a growth bet . And quite a big one. The investors — Verlinvest, Elevation Ca...
What is this company becoming? One question I have started asking myself much more often when looking at a business is: What is this company becoming? It sounds simple. But I think it changes the way you evaluate a company. For a long time, I looked at businesses through the usual lens — revenue growth, margins, cash flows, balance sheet, competitive advantage, valuation. And of course, all of these matter. But they tell you a lot about what the company is today . Businesses, however, don't stay where they are. A company may be quietly changing its product mix. Moving from commodity to specialised products. Building a brand where there was previously just distribution. Moving from services to technology. Fixing its unit economics. Entering a new geography. Or simply becoming a much better-run organisation. Sometimes these changes are obvious. Often they aren't. And this is where I think the real work in investing starts. I want to understand what is changing...