Clean energy in fashion 🍃

China’s punishment, Jet’s problems, and Branson goes to space.

Jul 12, 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:

Kicking off the week ☕

✅ Gotta settle — Jet Airways’ plans to take off hit another obstacle, with the new-owner approved compensation plan barely standing up to the staff’s expectations. Employees, demanding dues of well over thousand crores, are now being asked to settle for a lowball ₹52 crore check, which offers each employee well under ₹25K in comp, against the lakhs they’re claiming to be owed. Tough bind for employees — either sign off, and get back to earnin’, or stall and risk the deal falling through.

Another easy news-Sunday last night… Let’s have a quick rundown!

Clean energy in India keeps pulling big money 💪

What happened — CubicPV, a solar cell pioneer, is eyeing a $1.1 billion investment in India — to set up production facilities capable of churning 10 GW a year installed capacities, landing another major boost to GOI’s production incentive schemes.

CubicPV, although a bit of a noob in this business still, holds several respectable patents that replace decade-old inefficient solar manufacturing processes. Majority of their commitment will go to set up a solar wafer and cell manufacturing facility, with a $350 million capital infusion coming within a year.

Bottomline — making components necessary for global EV-fication can be India’s opportunity to emerge as a clean-tech factory to the world. So far, progress has been excellent.

While we’re here, 🌿

Hero Electric, the EV business of Hero Motors, raised ₹200 crores from a UAE based financial services player, to accelerate its product launches and build out production capacities.

With aggression from upstarts like Ola, Ather, rising by the day, old school automakers are slowly starting to feel the chills.

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China’s shameless purge continues 🙄

What Happened — After Didi, Chinese regulators returned to Tencent, blocking the company’s merger of two video game streaming sites Huya and DouYu — on antitrust concerns.

Worth a combined $5.3 billion, both Huya and DouYu own about 80% of the game streaming market in China, and Tencent, a major stakeholder in both, was pushing for a merger to save costs and streamline earnings.

Regulators’ stand — the deal will increase Tencent’s market share in gaming, to a point where Tencent can monopolize the emerging space going ahead. A meek, and bruised Tencent now plans on complying, dropping the merger idea completely. 🤧

Oh and while we’re here,

China’s now enforcing a comprehensive “cybersecurity audit” on any business from Chinese territory looking to IPO in the US — very likely a move to create an intentionally onerous process that ends up keeping Chinese businesses within the border.

Security on everyone’s mind 🤷‍♀️

Two quick updates from cyberspace that outline the current state of affairs and challenges:

The first half of 2021 was a record funding year (or half year) for cybersecurity — with a total of $9 billion in VC capital flooding the sector, already topping the $7.8B raised in ALL of 2020 (which was a record in itself). Authentication, audit, log analysis, zero-trust, are all becoming some of the hottest areas pulling in the dough.

Meanwhile, Kaseya, the company responsible for the ongoing shameful ransomware cyber attack, found itself in deep shit after reports emerged its employees had been flagging major cyber flaws in the tech stack for years, and some of them were even fired or asked to quit for their “outspoken” attitude. Audits are now being demanded.

Big picture — what’s nightmares for enterprises is becoming wet dreams for the market, with investor interest in the cybersecurity space hitting peak max.

Closing out — what up DMart? 🛒

Another Dalal Street favorite reported its quarterly earnings over the weekend — with revenues growing, profits up, and margins expanding, overall a pretty solid show.

Made ₹5K crores in sales, up 31.3% YoY
Profits of ₹115 crores, up 132% YoY — but the big jump is because business was essentially frozen at the same time last year
Revenues declined about ~30% vs. last quarter though, thanks to partial lockdowns — but damage looks well contained

With the worst of the 2nd wave done, management sounded upbeat about numbers pulling back up going forward.

Bottomline — so far, all earnings coming out reinforce one theme — best in class enterprises have only gotten stronger by the challenges rendered by COVID.

What else are we snackin’ 🍿

🌟 Show time - Mobikwik IPO papers will be submitted his week, with the business looking to raise $300 million at a $1 billion valuation. Tough sell.

🚀 Liftoff - Richard Branson and his crew broke multiple records when their supersonic space plane took em on a short yet consequential space trip. Bezos is scheduled for next week.