New Delhi: Home services provider Urban Company on Saturday announced a net loss of Rs 59.3 crore in Q2FY26, a significant drop from a profit of Rs 6.9 crore in the previous quarter. The loss was attributed to heavy upfront investments in its new daily-housekeeping vertical, Insta Help, which overshadowed strong revenue growth in its core services and products businesses, according to regulatory filings by the Gurugram-based firm.

The company posted a loss of Rs 1.82 crore in the July-September quarter last year, the company said. While revenue from operations increased 37 per cent year-on-year to Rs 380 crore, the total expenses rose to Rs 462 crore from Rs 384 crore in Q1. This resulted in adjusted EBITDA turning negative at Rs 35 crore, compared with a profit of Rs 21 crore in Q1.

Insta Help reported an EBITDA loss of Rs 44 crore, and excluding this segment, Urban Company achieved an adjusted EBITDA profit of Rs 10 crore, accounting for 0.9 per cent of net transaction value (NTV), the company noted.

“Early indicators for Insta Help are encouraging, with strong consumer adoption and repeat usage,” the company said in its shareholder letter. It added that it believed the segment holds “significant long-term opportunity and believes these investments are important to sustaining market leadership.”

The company expects its adjusted EBITDA losses to continue in the near term due to further investments in the Insta Help vertical, despite its core India and international businesses remaining profitable and cash-generating.

The company’s smart home products vertical, Native, which sells water purifiers and electronic door locks, recorded revenue of Rs 75 crore, up 179 per cent YoY, while losses narrowed to 9 per cent of NTV from 30 per cent in the previous year.

The home services provider closed the quarter with Rs 2,136 crore in cash and equivalents, up from Rs 1,664 crore in the previous quarter, mainly due to proceeds from its recent IPO.

New Delhi: Amazon CEO Andy Jassy has opened up about the company’s recent layoffs, which affected around 14,000 employees. Contrary to popular belief, he said the decision wasn’t about cutting costs or the rise of artificial intelligence. Instead, Jassy pointed to a deeper reason behind the move — company culture. “The announcement that we made a few days ago was not really financially driven, and it’s not even really AI-driven, not right now at least,” he said, as quoted by Business Insider. “It really — it’s culture.”

A Cultural Reset at Amazon

Andy Jassy’s comments reflect Amazon’s ongoing push to reshape its internal culture. As reported by Business Insider, he has been focused on raising performance standards, tightening discipline, and cutting down on unnecessary bureaucracy to make the company more efficient and agile.

During the earnings call, Jassy acknowledged that Amazon’s rapid expansion over the years had added “a lot more layers,” which ended up slowing down how decisions are made. He emphasised that the company now needs to “operate leaner and move faster,” particularly as artificial intelligence continues to reshape industries worldwide.

“Sometimes, without realizing it, you can weaken the ownership of the people that you have who are doing the actual work,” Jassy said. “And it can lead to slowing you down.” In a blog post on October 28, Amazon’s senior vice president of people experience and technology, Beth Galetti, also confirmed that the company is “making organizational changes across Amazon that will impact some of our teammates.”

“While this will include reducing in some areas and hiring in others, it will mean an overall reduction in our corporate workforce of approximately 14,000 roles,” she said. This marks Amazon’s largest round of layoffs since 2022, when about 27,000 employees were let go. Interestingly, Jassy’s recent comments contrast with what other Amazon executives have previously said about the reasons behind the job cuts.

The decision also reflects a broader trend across Big Tech. Giants like Google and Microsoft are undergoing what many call the “Great Flattening” — cutting down layers of management to speed up decision-making and eliminate unnecessary bureaucracy.

New Delhi: State-owned Bank of Baroda reported a mixed performance in Q2FY26, with an 8 per cent YoY decline in the net profit to Rs 4,809 crore, despite revenue growth and improved asset quality. 

The net profit dipped 8.2 per cent YoY from Rs 5,238 in Q2 FY25, while it inched up 5.9 per cent on a quarterly basis. The H1FY26 net profit stood at Rs 9,351 crore, the bank said, adding that the operating profit for the quarter was Rs 7,576 crore, while for the half year it was Rs 15,812 crore.

Meanwhile, during the quarter, net interest income rose to Rs 11,954 crore for the quarter, a 4.5 per cent rise quarter-on-quarter and reached Rs 23,388 crore for the first half of FY26. Operating expenses reached Rs 7,893 crore for the quarter, up 7.7 per cent YoY. Asset quality improved as gross non-performing assets decreased by 34 basis points YoY to 2.16 per cent.

Bank’s Net NPA also reduced by 3 bps YoY and stood at 0.57 per cent in Q2FY26. “Global Net Interest Margin (NIM) for Q2FY26 improves by 5 bps sequentially and stood at 2.96 per cent, while it was at 2.93 per cent for H1FY26,” the statement said.

Domestic Net Interest Margin (NIM) stood at 3.10 per cent for the quarter, with an improvement of 4 bps QoQ. Bank’s organic retail advances grew by 17.6 per cent, driven by strong growth across segments such as mortgage loans (19.8 per cent), auto loans (17.7 per cent), home loans (16.5 per cent), education loans (14 per cent), and personal loans (18.6 per cent).

On a year-to-date basis and a monthly basis, the stock has gained 15.27 per cent and 7.11 per cent, respectively.