boAt sails to its IPO ⛵

Byjus hungry, China got no chill, and Ola's promise.

Sep 14, 2021

Hi 👋, Tanvi here.

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Let’s go ahead and get started:

Market summary: 📊

Lazy start to the week in India, cooling off previous couple of weeks' rush. US had a flat day too, as rising inflation starts to worry people.

US:

S&P 500 - up 0.23%
Nasdaq - down 0.04%

India:

Nifty 50 - down 0.08%
Sensex - down 0.22%

What’s brewing hot? ☕

✅ Getting there — domestic supply chains are easing up and that’s helping prices of goods come down at the retail point. Consumer price inflation for the month of August cooled off to 5.30%, down about 30 basis points — a four month low. Food prices dropped substantially, while clothing, footwear, and oil, stuff that goes through a tedious logistical + production cycle is still pricey.

✅ Ritual carried forward — hung up on absolute global edtech domination, Byju’s carried through with another acquisition yesterday, buying out a US based online coding for kids player Tynker. The platform is sold to students as well as schools, where kids can login to complete task-based assignments and learn to code. Deal value is rumored to be around ~$100M, bringing Byjus’ total acquisition spend this year to $2 billion.

boAt sails to an IPO 👀

We’re a bit late here, but domestic consumer electronics brand boAt became the latest to join an illustrious IPO roster, looking to raise $500 million from the public, at a $1.4 billion valuation.

You don’t see credible consumer electronics brands coming out of India everyday, but boAt kicked ass appealing to a price-conscious middle-India base who was rapidly digitizing and needed sharper headphones to listen to music streams and watch videos (thanks Jio). End of 2020, the company became the 5th largest wearable brand worldwide, alongside Fitbit, churning over ₹700 crores in revenues at 300%+ growth rates.

Anyway, business has aggressively expanded into wearables, speakers and other electric accessories, and attracted the backing of PE powerhouses like Warbug Pincus.

Bottomline — strong brand image, a dominating 46% market share in India, popular line-up of products, and profitability… what more can you ask for?

Who got the dough 🔥

First up, BLR based Amagi, a company that sells cloud software to media businesses, raised $100 million from Accel, Premji Invest and Avataar Ventures.

Amagi’s platform allows large content producers to manage, distribute, and monetize their work across TV and mobile based streaming platforms, along with a suite of tools that make it easy to work with advertising partners for real-time video ad placement.

Key takeaway — the entire global digital media and advertising space has been exploding post COVID, and stocks from $FB, $SNAP, $GOOGL to tool-providers like $TTD, $ROKU, $MGNI are through the roof. Amagi's revenues have skyrocketed 136% in the last year.

Then turning heads to a cosmetics raise, ☝️

Online cosmetics platform Purplle is looking to raise $75 million at a $500 million+ valuation, with existing backers Norwest, Mirae, Sequoia pitching in. Nykaa’s IPO is drawing a ton of attention to the online cosmetics opportunity, which, helped by a forced-change in consumer behaviour, has gone ballistic after the pandemic.

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Beijing rekkts Alipay 🙄

Shoot them, then stomp em. After beating up Alibaba, blocking Ant Group’s IPO, destroying billions in shareholder value, China’s next agenda item is to split up AliPay.

Some context — Ant Group, an affiliate of Chinese e-commerce company Alibaba, run by Jack Ma, owns China’s no.1 payment superapp Alipay that has over 1 billion users, and was on its way to the world’s largest tech IPO before China shot them down.

What’s the move — anyway, Ant’s lending businesses (including a credit card biz, and an unsecured loans biz) will be broken into a separate entity from the rest of the fintech operation.

Worse? The Chinese state demands 24x7 access to “credit data” powering all Alipay’s lending decisions, which is just some old-school government spying shit. Here’s FT on it.

Closing out — Freshworks reclaims crown 👑

Freshworks is reading the room right and revising its IPO valuation to about $9 billion, raising $800-$900 million from the markets. That would not only make them the largest cloud business in India, but value the business at a considerable premium to rivals like Zendesk (25 times sales).

And while we’re on late-stage ventures kicking ass, 💰

Ola’s futuristic electric-vehicle factory will be run by an all woman crew, says the CEO. 10,000 women will be hired, trained, and employed, making it THE largest women-run production operation worldwide. First batch is a go.