Back from the dead 🧐

Maruti’s woes and stuff from the week before.

Sep 04, 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:

Market summary: 📊

India finished the week in style, with major indices adding nearly 3% for the week on the back of strong GDP growth. US fizzled out on Friday with investors leaving early for a long weekend.

US:

S&P 500 - down 0.034%
Nasdaq - up 0.31%

India:

Nifty 50 - up 0.48%
Sensex - up 0.52%

What’s brewing hot? ☕

✅ Self-driving quest — Apple still believes it can make a self-driving car work. Business Insider is reporting that the company is finally working with Toyota to get manufacturing sorted. Not surprising given Apple runs notoriously tight processes, and the Japanese are known for obsessing over quality, precision and waste-free production. Meanwhile, on the software font, Apple’s autonomy tests aren’t exactly looking bright. 2 accidents within a month were reported in California.

✅ Expanding needs — a consumer survey says Indians are upgrading their housing needs rapidly. 69% of Indian urban households say they’re looking to buy homes in the 45 lacs to 2.5 cores range, with just some 27% comfortable with budget homes under 45 lacs. 6 months ago, the budget home crowd was well over 35%. Could very well be the impact of work-from-home needs, post-COVID space issues, as well as pent up savings expanding appetite?

Share Filter Coffee ☕

Snapdeal is bacc from the dead ⚰️

What happened —OG ecommerce king of India, Snapdeal, is apparently mulling submitting its papers for a public offering, looking to raise $400 million at a $2.5 billion valuation.

One of India’s earliest unicorns, Snapdeal almost imploded back in 2017, fighting an expensive market share war with Flipkart and then new-entrant Amazon, further strained by a failed merger with Flipkart. Tough decisions followed, including layoffs and heavy fiscal discipline and on the back of COVID’s boost to ecommerce, the business is finally standing on its two feet.

Profitability may still be wishful thinking though, we’ll know soon!

Bottomline — pretty sure $2.5B valuation isn’t exactly what investors hoped for on their best days, but hey! something is better than nothing…

Ouch Maruti 🤧

What happened — Maruti is recalling nearly 1.8 lakh cars to inspect or replace a faulty motor generator in some of its mid-size models.

Vehicles manufactured between 2018 and 2020 are affected, mostly Ciaz, Ertiga, Brezza and a few others. While recalls are routine in this business, it’s much unwelcome at a time when Maruti is scrambling with production freezes due to semiconductor shortages, especially with the holiday season looming.

Bottomline — while the rest of the markets are sprinting, Maruti stock has returned -11% so far this year. Not changing anytime soon by the looks of it.

Aight that’s it for today, quick look at what went down this week…

🏦 Make banking great again — Banks in India rolled out the much anticipated Account Aggregation framework that creates a foundational system that will make citizens’ banking, financial, and transaction history portable and easily shareable with third parties. Basically, a government-funded version of Plaid. The digital applications around lending, financial management, neobanking, and other stuff that the move will pioneer downstream is beyond imagination.

🙌Rooting for Indian SaaS — Freshworks is going public on the Nasdaq, looking to raise $100M at a $3.5 billion valuation. Started as a customer support chat tool back in 2008 in Chennai, the company lit the path for the SaaS industry in India, and has since then moved into marketing, HR tools, IT management, and a broad suite of adjacent software services. Revenues grew 40% YoY last year to $308 million, losses are containable, and the valuation looks like a steal.

🛵Ola leading Indian EV market — Ola Electric is in talks with private equity investors to raise over $500 million, at a $3 billion valuation to fund the launch and production of its much anticipated electric bikes. With the ride-hailing business still limping, parent organization’s coffers are a bit dry to deliver on promises, but Ola’s upcoming IPO should bring some more $$ to the table.

💰Good old media — Forbes will be going public at a $630 million valuation, via a SPAC merger, joining Buzzfeed and Vox Media who chose to go public the same way a few months ago. Anyway, Forbes is a household name reaching 150M+ monthly users and makes about $160 million in revenues through ads, live events, print and digital subscription. Lookin fine.

🥴The domino effect — Apple and Google’s app-store models are under attack. First, regulators in South Korea signed a bill that will let developers choose a payment processor of their choice for inside apps, as opposed to compulsorily using the payment pipes offered by Google or Apple. Then, an antitrust suit was filed in India against Apple, claiming that Apple’s 30% in-app payment processing fee is responsible for thwarting innovation. Lastly, a 5 year dispute in Japan was put to rest, when Apple caved in to allow companies to use alternative payment mechanisms. Good luck Tim.

TikTok owner Bytedance acquired Pico, a VR headset maker, to build out a computing platform that helps Bytedance level up with Facebook and Google.

In India, gaming company Nazara Tech acquired OpenPlay, an online real-money gaming player for ₹186 crore, to execute on its agenda of earning 10% revenues via real-money gaming by 2025.

Lastly, private equity giant Prosus acquired Billdesk, one of India’s oldest payment processors, in an eye-popping $4.7 billion deal. Billdesk will be combined with Prosus-owned PayU, to form one of India and Asia’s largest payment processors, handling $147B volumes annually.

Hit that 💚 if you liked today’s issue.

You can forward this email or share FC on social media by clicking the button below. Thanks and Ciao! 😀