Airlines pumping it ✈️

Venture deals, FB sheds croc tears, and Dimon hurts BTC.

Oct 12, 2021

Market summary: 📊

India added some more, ending the day in all time high territory. US kicked off the week on the wrong foot, as big tech and energy stocks lost support.

US:

S&P 500 - down 0.69%
Nasdaq - down 0.64%

India:

Nifty 50 - up 0.28%
Sensex - up 0.13%

What’s brewing hot ☕

✅ Fire them up — China asked 72 of its coal mines in Inner Mongolia, its second-largest coal-producing province, to pump up production to help manage the ongoing power shortage in the country. Clean energy be damned! Widespread coal shortages have led to power shutdowns downstream, which has forced factories to cut back production, hurting industrial output. Balancing climate change agenda alongside economic activity is becoming increasingly tricky.

✅ No stopping this party — Indian stock market’s unbridled upward march helped the Nifty 50 breach 18,000 for the first time ever, only to settle an inch below by end of day. Regardless, Nifty 50 has returned 27% year to date, and 122% from the bottom of March 2020, led by excellent performance by Tata Motors, energy stocks, consumer giants like Titan, and Reliance. Who would’ve thought!

Look At Us Paul Rudd GIF by First We Feast: Hot Ones

Akasa ready for the skies ✈️

What happened — the low-cost airliner seeded by Rakesh Jhunjhunwala, Akasa Airlines, got its nod from the Aviation Ministry to go ahead with its launch. The company is targeting a summer 2022 takeoff.

Former Jet Airways CEO Vinay Dube will be running the shop. The next step for the business would be to seek an Air Operators’ permit from the DCGA, start hiring, look for planes, and book routes.

No room for error — with all eyes set on recovery, India’s air-travel scene is suddenly looking too crowded. Jet Airways is getting things in order to be ready to fly by March 2022. A recapitalized Air India meanwhile will try to flex its renewed enthusiasm, and the Tatas also leveraged the trough of the pandemic to increase their stake in Air Asia — so expect a serious effort.

On the other hand, fuel prices are rising, and and the stock market has already set its expectations pretty darn high with current budget leaders (Indigo, SpiceJet - up 50% over the year).

While India is ever-bullish on airlines, the US is crippling 👎

2000+ Southwest Airlines flights across the US were cancelled through the weekend and Monday due to what the airline say is “air traffic control” issues, but unofficial sources say is a major Pilot strike, over opposition to mandatory vaccinations for staff.

The chaos has led to multiple other flights canceling as well, and just as they were recovering, Airlines are staring at billions in losses, again!

Cloud Kitchens keep pulling in dough 💰

Days after Rebel Foods’ $175M raise, another cloud kitchen startup, Hygiene BigBite, has raised $15 million from Falcon Edge.

Zomato’s IPO, a systematic shift in consumer habits during COVID, and operating models honed during the past 16 months — are all catalysts driving change.

Anyway, Hygiene owns and operates about 10 brands (Gunpowder, Biryani Tip are some well-known ones across Bengaluru, Pune, Hyderabad and Chennai), as well as runs 100+ ghost kitchens in these cities. Fresh funds will be put to accelerate growth, and make a move in the packaged food biz.

Worth noting — online penetration of food services in India will double to $12.5 billion by 2025. Plenty of $$ on the table for everyone!

Meanwhile, quick look at a couple of early-raises we’re cheering 🙌

First, networking platform for women, Leap Club, raised an $800K pre-A round from Angels and its community members. Leap Club runs a member only community in select cities, allowing women professionals to network, recruit, invest, and connect. 3,000 women-members are part of the platform.
Neo-banking platform SaltPe closed a $500K pre-seed to build a borderless banking account for Indian small businesses operating on a global scale. Currently the platform offers SaaS tools to manage existing banking services, but plans on integrating its own financial products going ahead. 👏

Facebook wants to clean its act 👻

With public opinion swiftly changing, and regulator mood souring, Facebook says it will make some hard, real changes — starting with how the feed is structured on its apps, showing stuff that’s “more friends, and less politics”.

Facebook’s spokesperson, in a TV interview, also reiterated that Instagram will be rewired to make sure accusations of mental harm to young teenagers will be addressed, again with focus on content from close friends.

FYI, one of the prime accusations of the FB whistleblower showed how FB was aware that Insta damages teenage-women's health.

Shooting two birds in one strike — as benevolent as FB’s moves sound, they’re likely more worried about losing popularity among the younger demographic than anything else. FB’s “homepage of the world” approach to social media has led to a noisy experience that clearly the young don’t favor.

Platforms like Snapchat meanwhile were early in making a hard shift to 1:1 comms — the GenZ loved it, flocked to the platform, and Snapchat has 10’xed in 2 years.

Add TikTok, Roblox, Twitch, to the mix — and these services are slowly, but decisively chipping away at FB’s base. Stopping the exodus of the user base is one of Zuck’s most pressing issues — directly in conflict with his cash-machine though.

Share Filter Coffee ☕

Closing out — Jamie kicks Bitcoin, again 🤷

You can’t FOMO the CEO of JP Morgan into $BTC, no matter the strength of the bull rally. Jamie Dimon, a long standing critic of the currency, caused a furor again — calling Bitcoin worthless, and warning his clients of investing in the asset class.

Fact that those comments come despite JP Morgan’s plans to launch a crypto coin, offer access to crypto via wealth-management solutions, and kick off a new-business unit for blockchain projects, sounds… a bit hypocritical.

The comments took some wind out of Bitcoin’s momentum.

What else are we snackin’ 🍿

🏆 3 peat - Economists David Card, Joshua D Angrist, and Guido Imbens won the 2021 Nobel prize for Economics for their work on Natural Experiments — showing how real-life experiments can effectively be used to answer questions and draw scientific conclusions.

👨 Poaching talent - Reddit hired Pali Bhat, the ex-VP of Product at Google Cloud as its first Chief Product Officer, as the massively undervalued social platform doubles down on monetization and realizing its full potential.