Billdesk hot damn! 🤯
RIL's move, GDP wins, and Big Tech screwed.
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Market summary: 📊
Another blast of a day in India on the back of solid GDP data. US took it easy on Tuesday after a record open to the week on Monday.
US:
S&P 500 - down 0.13%
Nasdaq - down 0.14%
India:
Nifty 50 - up 1.19%
Sensex - up 1.16%
What’s brewing hot? ☕
✅ Ain’t happening in Beijing — China loves to regulate its kids. New laws will limit time spent playing online games by kids under 18 to under 3 hours on weekends and holidays, while barring gameplay on weekdays — all in a bid to stop kids from “decaying” mentally say the Chinese. We get the idea, but when you spell it out like that, feels oddly draconian. China’s $58 billion gaming industry wasn't expecting that gut punch.
✅ We back in business — India’s GDP bounced back a solid 20.2% YoY for the April to June quarter. RBI and the markets were eyeing for a slightly better jump, but markets didn’t think much of the miss and stocks were flying at all time highs. Sectors like construction, mining, manufacturing, trade and tourism which had frozen during the same time last year showed some of the strongest recoveries.
Billdesk acquired in India’s largest fintech deal 💰
What happened — private equity giant Prosus brought the big guns to acquire one of India’s oldest payment processors, Billdesk, in a $4.7 billion deal.
Billdesk basically offers an online payment gateway that lets large enterprises as well as several government entities across India accept payments online, processing over $60B in annual volumes.
The business will now be part of PayU, another Prosus backed payment processor, with the combined entity becoming one of India’s largest processors — handling $147B volumes annually. And as India’s war on cash further intensifies, the new platform is in an excellent position to keep gaining share.
Meanwhile, OG of acquisitions is cooking up another one 🤑
Reliance is apparently looking to spend $1.2 billion on acquiring a major European solar panel maker, REC Group, from its current owners ChemChina.
REC will directly add 1.8GW of solar production capacity to Reliance’s arsenal, while helping the business cut reliance on Chinese suppliers for its fledgling green energy business. Reliance will raise $600M in outside capital to fund the deal.
ByteDance buys a platform 💪
What’s the move — the owner of TikTok and a bazillion other successful apps acquired Pico, a virtual reality headset maker, to build out its own ecosystem of computing hardware.
To gain control of the technology paradigms shaping up on the horizon, like metaverse for example, Bytedance needs more than just a few apps — like a hardware computing platform, and an ecosystem of services linked to it, on top of which third party developers can build apps.
Google has Pixel + Android and a million devs, Apple has iOS + iPhone, Facebook has Oculus… So Bytedance had to buy itself something.
Pico basically makes VR hardware and headsets (just like Oculus) for a Chinese audience. They’ve been around for a while, and this March became the third-largest VR headset maker globally, after shipments rose 44.7% YoY.
Fingers crossed — With an acquisition from within its borders, Bytedance doesn't have to hopefully explain itself to its regulatory overlords too much.
Quick look at a venture raise 💸
Two wheeler financing and buying platform OTO raised $6 million in its Series A round from Matrix Partners, Kunal Shah and a few others.
OTO basically leases you a bike for ~35% lower cost than a traditional bank loan EMI, with the option to keep, return, or upgrade your vehicle at the end of your lease term. The business operates in 4 cities, and growth has apparently 4x’ed over the past 12 months.
Closing out — Koreans stick it to the Californians 👀
Regulators in South Korea signed a bill that amends their telco act to require “app distributors” like Google’s Play Store or Apple's App Store to give developers the freedom to use alternate payment mechanisms in their apps.
How does this work — in simple terms, developers can choose to use a payment processor of their choice inside apps, as opposed to compulsorily using the payment pipes offered by Google or Apple. This helps the developers avoid paying upto 30% payment commissions to these tech overlords.
If you remember, using a cheaper payment processing method was the foundation of the Apple vs. Epic Games lawsuit, as well as countless other lawsuits from companies like Spotify, Amazon, and even Netflix.
Big picture — part of Apple and Google’s defense relied on arguing that everybody followed the same rules globally. With SK breaking that consistency, each geographic region gets more leeway in negotiating what works for them.
… including developers from India who are already up in arms against the duopoly.
What else are we snackin’ 🍿
💆 Work-life balance - Meesho to give its employees a break for 14-days after festive season is over.
🤨 Close to home - Amitabh Bachchan is soon rolling out his own NFT collection. Call the top?
Hit that 💚 if you liked today’s issue.
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