On 30 June 2026 a payment fell due that the company could not make. Udaan's offshore parent, Trustroot Internet, had issued $170 million of convertible notes, and it defaulted. Within days three creditors began insolvency proceedings in the Singapore High Court.
Amod Malviya, Sujeet Kumar and Vaibhav Gupta had walked out of senior roles at Flipkart in 2016 to build a business-to-business marketplace for India's small traders. Their bet was plain. Kirana stores, chemists and general merchants bought stock from local wholesalers in a patchy, cash-heavy, slow system, and an app could sit between them and manufacturers.
When money tightened, revenue fell about 40 percent in FY23, then about 20 percent in FY25.
It grew like a bonfire. Udaan raised money from some of the biggest investors in the world, a total that has now passed $2 billion across 17 rounds. In FY22 its revenue neared ₹10,000 crore, and its loss was ₹3,076 crore. The company had been building warehouses, credit lines and delivery fleets, and burning cash to do it.
Then the table was turned. When money tightened, revenue fell about 40 percent in FY23, then about 20 percent in FY25. The board and management cut costs and shrank the set of categories they chased. In June 2025 the company closed a $114 million Series G at a valuation 59 percent lower than before. Vaibhav Gupta, who leads the business, has been the face of the cost-cutting push.
The repair has been partial. In FY26 operating revenue rose 12.6 percent to ₹5,134 crore and the loss narrowed to ₹852 crore. Management says it grew at roughly 25 percent a year for ten quarters, cut EBITDA burn by about 70 percent and improved margins by nearly 500 basis points. It is leaning on private labels, which make up 15 to 25 percent of staples sales, and on horeca360, its supply arm for hotels and caterers. Swiggy agreed to sell its LYNK distribution business to it for ₹500 crore in shares.
Yet the auditors still flagged material uncertainty about whether the group can continue as a going concern, with liabilities exceeding assets by ₹791 crore. Udaan has said the Singapore proceedings will not materially affect Indian operations.
For a first-time founder the point is a hard one. Scale is not the same as strength. A marketplace can double each year and still have no answer for the day the cheque stops. Udaan's story is being written now, and it asks whether the discipline came early enough.