Digital gormint 📱
ITC buy, Gig economy, and change at Intel.
Hi 👋, Tanvi here.
Filter Coffee is a newsletter that hits your inbox every morning with notable tech and business news scoops to jump start your day. Sign up below for free 👇
Let’s go ahead and get started:
Stock summary:
US - S&P 500 - down 0.65%
India - Sensex - up 1.47%
Gormint digitizing itself 👏
The Indian Meteorological Department has launched its own mobile app offering real time updates on weather conditions to urban populace of 450 cities in India.
Called Mausam, the app will provide basic data on weather conditions including temperature, humidity, wind speeds etc., as well as radar and satellite images. This service, along with a previously rolled out app called Meghdoot for farmers, are part of a larger mandate taken by the department to digitize itself. Kudos!
A rural version of the service is coming soon as well, equipped with regional languages and features specifically for farmers.
Our thoughts: well if the IMD can, what's stopping other government bodies from digitizing their services? Moves like this could be the end of many citizen pain points. Read more.
ITC scoops up spice leader 👍
Relentlessly pursuing diversification away from the Tobacco business and heavily toward FMCG, ITC will acquire spice-manufacturer Sunrise Foods in a Rs.2,150 Crore all cash deal.
Sunrise, a popular Kolkata based family owned company is mainly engaged in the manufacturing, distribution and retailing of a range of staple spices and instant cooking products. They dominate the industry by market share in Eastern India.
The company had a turnover of Rs.592 Crore last year, which gives the deal a 3.6x sales multiple - slightly expensive for a consumer goods buyout but still reasonable. ITC will own Sheetgrah Private Ltd. and Hobbits International Foods Pvt. Ltd. as part of the deal.
The acquisition bolsters ITC’s existing spice brand Aashirwaad, while offering them a strong supply chain and distribution network to tap into the eastern parts of the country. Management believes there is a significant opportunity to unlock value. Read more.
Strengthening India’s gig economy 💪
A B2B marketplace for talent, GigIndia, has raised about a million dollars for a pre-series A round led by Japan based Incubate Fund India and Beyond Next Ventures, and other marquee angel investors.
The platform basically helps enterprises outsource basic tasks at scale by plugging them into an on demand network of workers. The company has over 750,000 gig based workforce across 100 cities in India.
The newly raised funds will be directed towards improving technology to expand the platform and to renew sales efforts.
Takeway: India’s unskilled/semi skilled labor force is at over 450 Million. Such platforms are playing a critical role of empowering talent, training them and then plugging them into our digital transformation story. We’ve barely scratched the surface and the space is hot with investors. Read more.
Bharti’s OneWeb bid gains support 📡
Hughes Network Systems, one of the pioneers of satellite based broadband networks and services, will infuse $50M toward Bharti Enterprises’ bid for defunct satellite company OneWeb.
OneWeb had gone bankrupt trying to build a constellation of satellites to deliver wireless broadband globally. We wrote about Bharti’s bid for them a while ago. Hughes hopes the commitment will offer it a tiny 5% stake in the business and will allow it to continue as a trusted technology and distribution partner to OneWeb.
The UK government is in bed with both the companies over this transaction and had played the matchmaker role initially when Bharti expressed interest in OneWeb. Furthermore, Hughes Communications India, a majority-owned subsidiary of Hughes and Bharti Airtel are in the process of combining their satellite broadband operations in India. OneWeb has over 74 LEO satellites in space.
Takeaway: it's good to see Bharti Enterprises humming along while Airtel gets smacked in the face routinely by Jio in India. Perhaps, through various such partnerships they can hopefully manage a surprise comeback in the race to digitize India. Read more.
Intel ousts Murthy 👋
It turns out Intel’s revered Chief Engineering Officer Murthy Renduchintala will be departing the company following the company’s 7nm manufacturing snafu, which infuriated investors and forced CEO Bob Swan to take some action.
Intel’s answer to the problems is a massive reorganization of its technical units, with technology, systems architecture and client group all getting new heads who will report directly to the CEO.
Intel had made an exception from its regular practice of promoting leaders from within when it scooped up Murthy from Qualcomm, where he had an illustrious career. The bet unfortunately did not work out well.
While Murthy was mostly hired to broaden focus on CPUs, another effort under his watch had been a dud last year. Intel had ended its pursuit of 5G modems when it sold that unit to Apple for $1Billion after reports suggested the end product wasn’t upto the mark. Here’s more.
Bottomline: Intel is in some hot water. Its products are being delayed, management is back tracking, and investors are unhappy. It will be interesting to see how the old giant turns a corner.
Tweet of the day -
A rare glimpse into Jeff Bezos’ thinking and his famous grit.
What else are we snackin’ 🍿
📱 Domestic innovation calls answered - Nearly 7,000 entrepreneurs and startups across the country have applied for the government's App Innovation Challenge, which aims to promote domestic applications over foreign ones. The PM had launched the contest on July 4 following the China app ban.
☁️ Google expands cloud partnerships - Orange, France’s biggest telecom company, and Google on Tuesday announced a strategic partnership covering data, artificial intelligence (AI) and cloud computing services.
🤞 Amazon’s quick bet on London - Amazon will begin fast and free deliveries of groceries in London, with the aim of serving demand in broader UK. The company has been investing aggressively to build two-hour delivery infrastructure for essentials in the UK.
✈️ How bad is the airline business - Airlines in Asia carried only 724,000 international passengers in June, a 98% slump from a year earlier. All Asia-Pacific airlines carried 61 million passengers in the first half of the year, down 68% from a year earlier. Travel demand has mostly evaporated in the second quarter and the industry is now bracing for massive downsizings.
🏛️ FB gets temporary reprieve from EU court - FB has been granted a temporary halt to turn over highly personal information which was requested by The European Union Investigators after the EU general court suspended the regulators request.
🚚 Flipkart to offer 90 minute deliveries - Walmart owned Flipkart is planning to offer 90 minute deliveries for grocery and home accessories. The hyperlocal service will be called Flipkart Quick and is part of the company’s strategy to take on Jio and Amazon.
We’re grateful to have you as a reader. If you’ve enjoyed Filter Coffee would you consider letting a couple friends know about us as well?
You can just forward this email or share FC on social media by clicking the button below. Thanks and Ciao! 😀