18th Unicorn 🦄

Sindhu delivers, FMCG earnings, and Delhivery's acquisition.

Aug 02, 2021

Hi 👋, Tanvi here.

Filter Coffee hits your inbox every morning with notable tech and business news scoops to jump start your day.

Let’s go ahead and get started:

What’s brewing hot? ☕

👑 Firstly, congratulations to PV Sindhu for getting India it’s 3rd medal in Tokyo. Sindhu joins wrestler Sushil Kumar as the only 2 Indian athletes ever to have won 2 medals at the Olympics. 👏

✅ Attacc on Amazon — EU’s big tech assault continues. This time, the Luxembourg National Commission for Data Protection slapped Amazon with a $887 million fine for using customer data for advertising without obtaining any user permissions. That’s the largest ever fine imposed by a European nation particularly around the misuse of customer data. Amazon pleaded not guilty, obviously.

Otherwise, turned out to be quite a lousy news weekend! Let’s do a quick rundown…

Softbank whips out a new one 🦄

What happened — B2B commerce platform OfBusiness raised a $160 million led by Softbank, valuing the startup at $1.5 billion, with Falcon Edge and Matrix Partners pitching in.

That’d be unicorn number 18! 🥂

OfBusiness runs an industrial goods procurement platform for SMEs — replacing a phone and paper-pen system with a digital marketplace. Portfolio also includes a SaaS platform for tender management, as well as additional services for stakeholders like lending. B2B commerce volumes are apparently over a billion, and lending volumes are growing 80% YoY, with a loan book of $220 million.

Meanwhile, Delhivery got itself a deal ☝️

The logistics service provider is buying out its smaller competition Spoton Logistics for about $200 million, says Moneycontrol.

Spoton works with auto, pharma, electronics, retail, and a range of industries to offer last mile delivery and managed supply chain solutions, with reach in 300+ cities. The assets will now beef up Delhivery’s arsenal — filling gaps before the IPO.

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Marico says “same same” 🤓

Marico disclosed its second quarter numbers last night — and the performance was consistent with FMCGs we’ve seen before, where raw material costs are weighing on profits and margins, but growing revenues are partially offsetting damage.

Quick look at numbers:

Total revenue jumped 31% YoY to ₹2.5K crores
Profits came in at ₹365 crores, down 6% YoY
Operating margin declined to 19% from 24%

Management expects raw material volatility to last, which makes for good excuse to raise product prices on end consumers.

Bottomline — despite margin and profitability pressures, stock has been flying. Investors are basically hoping that as inflation cools off, the extra price differential will run right down to the bottom line, boosting profits in the long run.

Britannia had a good day too, 👌

Profits for the second quarter grew 7% compared to the quarter before, with revenues increasing 8.7%. However, rising prices of essential commodities — palm oil and crude — kept margins flat at 16.3%.

Tad better than the rest, but similar outcomes.

Setting the mood for this week 📰

Markets are entering yet another busy week. Here’s some of the top things on investors’ minds…

Second quarter — major earnings coming from Titan, Hindalco, as well as the banks HDFC, PNB, Bank of Baroda, will dictate any big market moves
IPO headlines will be busy too — Devyani International, the guys managing Pizza Hut, Costa Coffee, KFC, and a bunch of other brands in India will open bidding on Aug 4. Meanwhile, Glenmark life sciences will start trading on Aug 6.
Another busy earnings week on Wall Street too with HSBC, pharma companies like AbbVie, loads of SaaS stocks, and internet companies like Zillow, Wayfair, Expedia, Carvana lining up with their marksheets.

Above all, rising delta variant cases in India, as well as in the western world where recovery optimism is running far ahead of itself, will be watched closely.

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