Crypto gets a unicorn 🚀
Tata wants semis, Markets on fire, and Zuck needs to watch out.
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Market summary: 📊
Another positive day in India, with IPO chatter helping keep the mood upbeat. US had a mixed day, with S&P flat, and tech hammered.
US:
S&P 500 - up 0.099%
Nasdaq - down 0.53%
India:
Nifty 50 - up 0.13%
Sensex - up 0.28%
What’s popping hot? ☕
✅ Buy them out — SpaceX made its first ever acquisition in its 19 years of existence, buying out a satellite connectivity startup Swarm Technologies. Swarm operates a network of these tiny sandwich-sized satellites floating around, about 120 of them, as well as a ground station network. It also sells a tiny modem chip called the “Tile”, which goes into devices and connects them with the internet remotely via the satellite network.
✅ Tata wants to take on Semis — Tata chairman N Chandrasekaran announced the company is throwing its hat into the semiconductor business, in the middle of a global semi chip shortage, setting up an independent semiconductor manufacturing unit. It’s unclear which products Tata wants to focus on, but the group seems keen on making the most of altering supply chains and problems with over-reliance on China, which makes India a promising destination for semi manufacturing. And given Tata’s success in riding major transformative waves in the past (ex, the IT boom with TCS), hard to not get excited about these bets!
Crypto frenzy grips Venture Street 📈
CoinDCX raised $90 million for its Series C round from Eduardo Saverin’s B Capital, as well as Coinbase, taking its valuation to $1.1 billion — going down in history as India’s first crypto unicorn!
Ramping up its growth over the past couple of months, and benefitting from regulator-scrutiny of its competition in India, CoinDCX scaled up to double its user base to over 3.5 million — shrugging off price slumps and even Indian banks’ anti-crypto stand.
Fresh funds will be put to scale up to 50 million users, as well as expand portfolio with a bunch of other products to simplify the asset class for emerging investors.
Worth calling out —$6.6 billion have been invested in crypto so far this year by Indian buyers, nearly 7x from last year.
While we’re on crypto raises, ☝️
Mudrex, a YC-backed automated crypto asset management platform raised $2.5 million in seed funding from Nexus VP.
Mudrex basically allows expert traders to set up algorithms, and then license them out to average retail users looking to mimic successful strategies. $1B+ volume has been traded on the platform to date.
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Ain’t just VCs pouring into startups 💰
What’s poppin’ — corporations are investing into startups with the same aggression as venture capitalists.
2,000+ corporate venture capital deals were announced during the first-half of 2021, deploying capital worth $79 billion, already more than corporate venture capital for ALL of 2020!
Some interesting stats outlined:
120 corporate VC-backed companies went public globally so far this year, 3x from 2020
Mega rounds of $100M+ 3x’ed from last year
Avg. deal size of a corporate venture investment grew by 75% YoY to $47 million!
Google, Salesforce, and Coinbase ran some of the most prolific venture arms among all — kinda in sync with the feisty growth happening in the verticals (media, cloud software, crypto) these companies play in.
Handing power to retail shareholders 💪
Robinhood made an interesting acquisition — buying out shareholder communications management platform Say.com, for $140 million, in a bid to offer retail investors on its platform a bigger voice.
Say basically sells a software portal that allows retail investors to connect with managements of companies they’re invested in, and ask questions, vote in shareholder meetings, and exercise other shareholder rights. Some commoners don’t even know that that’s possible!
Robinhood plans on adding the suite to its services, to elevate the average investors’ voice — alongside a bunch of other services meant to level the playing field. Here’s the blog if you’re interested.
While we’re on acquisitions, 👌
India saw a sweet success story when TechnoPro, a Japanese staffing and service firm, acquired Udupi, KA based digital-services firm Robosoft Tech for ₹805 crores.
Robosoft is a full service digital transformation consultant, that helps laggard enterprises bring their digital interfaces into 2021. Sweet win!
Closing out — Masa leaves some hints into Swiggy 🍗
While presenting at Softbank’s quarterly earnings last night, Masa Son offered a rare peek into Swiggy’s numbers!
Quick look:
Swiggy reports 20 million monthly active users
Processes about ~1.5 million orders every day
Although no absolutes were disclosed, order volumes have grown 2.5x, while revenue has grown a much faster 2.8x over the last 12 months
Also — Softbank offered bullish commentary on India, said it’ll pause China investments for a bit, and disclosed its startup portfolio has swollen by $10B+ in value over past quarter. Here’s a look at the financials!
What else are we snackin’ 🍿
👑 Watch out Zuck - TikTok overtook Facebook to become the most downloaded social media app in the world. Short form video, FTW!
🤝 Deeper bench - Pine Labs added Kunal Shah to its board, strengthening governance ahead of a 2023 overseas IPO.
Hit that 💚 if you liked today’s issue.
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Pondering when startup like Zomato, Swiggy will be in black and give some return to retail investors. OR they will enjoy journey on investor money without any guilt. May be at last the original smart founder may not exit and sell off 100% with hefty sum to some covetous
investor.