Air India sold ✈️

Short video + Crypto, and Stuff from the week before.

Oct 09, 2021

Market summary: 📊

Despite some midweek choppiness, India finished the week on a high note — inches away from all time highs. US investors booked profits before the weekend and pulled the markets down a notch.

US:

S&P 500 - down 0.19%
Nasdaq - down 0.51%

India:

Nifty 50 - up 0.59%
Sensex - up 0.64%

Weekend caffeine shot ☕

✅ Mobikwick gets the signal — SEBI approved the ₹1,900 crore IPO of digital payments player Mobikwick. FYI, the business made about ₹288 crores in revenue last year, down about 18% YoY (thanks COVID) while still losing money by the boatloads. Competition from better-capitalized rivals PayTM, Google Pay, and others is rising and the IPO-docs say 40% of freshly-raised funds raised will be put to drive customer acquisition and retention via discounts and promotions. Welp.

✅ Air India goes back to Tata — Bloomberg was right after all! GOI chose Tata Sons as the winner of the bid to run Air India. Not too surprising, given AI’s turnaround will need deep pockets and top-notch operational expertise — which few groups outside of Tata can easily spare. Anyway, Tata will pay up ₹18K crore, of which 15% would go to GOI, while the rest goes to clear AI’s ₹45K debt. In return, Tata’s will take control of the $6B+ assets of AI, including a fleet of 140+ planes, collectibles, and thousands of highly-valuable airport slots in India and overseas! Taking public next?

Share Filter Coffee ☕

Chingari lights a fire 💸

Last thing we’d expect is one of the short-video players from India to jump on the crypto bandwagon, but here we are…

What happened — Chingari raised $19 million from a group of nearly 2 dozen investors — including top-tier crypto investors Solana Capital, and crypto exchange Kraken.

Management says the funds will be put towards improving the tech stack, building functionality for creators such as tipping, and for launching Chingari’s own crypto token called $GARI — based on the Solana blockchain.

Well this isn’t the first time a social network has integrated crypto. But Chingari’s 30M+ monthly active users come deep from Bharat, and since crypto is still somewhat a gray patch in India — will be intriguing to see how regulators view it all!

Fun fact — the round was raised solely using stable coins like USDC and Tether.

Meanwhile, another major raise incoming, ☝️

Tiger Global is prepping to lead a $100 million round in credit-card startup Slice — which specifically targets young millennials and Gen Z.

Slice’s new product, which offers a $27 credit line for folks completely new to the credit-game, has been making quite the waves, and rumors are Tiger is muscling a few other VCs to win the deal.

Slice has some 3M users, and is signing up 110K users on its cards each month!

That’s all we have for today folks! Here’s a quick look at what went down this week…

👍 Oyo applied for an IPO — Oyo’s financials got mixed reactions. Fundamentals were a bit weak — with revenues tanking 70% over the past year to $660 million, and losses towering at $500M+. When placed alongside the $10B valuation, things clearly look out of order. But… Oyo’s digital prowess with 100M+ app downloads, 10M people on loyalty program, and nearly 2x higher avg. customer spend compared to other hotels of similar stature, were some bright spots.

🧐 Facebook was flogged in public — Wall Street Journal did several hit pieces on FB this week showing how management turns a blind eye to targeted misinformation campaigns. The whistleblower who leaked docs to WSJ then showed up to a Senate testimony into the company’s practices. Meanwhile, Zuck wrote a 1,500+ word essay, rebutting the accusations. The theatre continued in the backdrop where Facebook’s services saw one of its largest outages ever — even yesterday, again.

🤑 Global Foundries will IPO — the 3rd largest global semiconductor contract manufacturer, Global Foundries, is planning an IPO, hoping to leverage the ongoing semi shortage as an excuse to raise and invest big money. The company makes custom chips for other semi giants like AMD, Apple, making $6 billion in revenues a year. Few months ago, GF was discussing a $30B acquisition deal with Intel, which didn’t materialize, and hence the move.

🤝 Thrasio coming to India — global ecommerce rollup king Thrasio wants to buy out Indian consumer durables brand, Lifelong Online — marking the company’s entry into the local market. Lifelong sells electronic appliances found in the kitchen, as well as grooming tools, and even fitness machines, making about ₹40 crores in revenues. Buzzing activity within the roll-up space is great for local D2C ventures.

💪 Netflix wins with Squid Games — Korean dark-thriller Squid Games is on its way to become Netflix’s BIGGEST show ever, with 80 million+ streams around the world, topping charts in 90 countries. Games from the show are being converted into TikTok challenges, while apps themed around it are being launched. Netflix, which spends $17B on its own content, was said to be losing its mojo… well not anymore.

🙌 Titan signals a good recovery — Titan reported a solid July to September quarter, with the core jewelry business growing 78% YoY, online sales of jewelry growing 95% YoY, and management opening 47 new stores in anticipation of a strong recovery during the festive season. Last years’ holiday season was mostly a washout in India, and investors are holding loaded expectations this time!

🦄 Lastly, this week brought heavy unicorn showers on the subcontinent —

Grocery delivery player Licious closed a $52 million Series G round from IIFL and Avendus, doubling valuation to a billion dollars.

Then, CoinSwitch Kuber doubled its valuation to $1.9 billion, raising $260 million from Andreessen Horowitz and Coinbase.

And lastly, the holding company behind Faasos, Rebel Foods, closed a $175 million Series F round to build more cloud kitchens.

Shit’s lit!

Hit that 💚 if you liked today’s issue.

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