Dukaan tech is bacc 💰
Dukaan tech is bacc 💰
LIC's bid, Satellite Internet, and Cognizant screwed.
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Market summary: 📊
Indian stocks continued upward climb with Sensex finishing on all time highs, helped by optimism in global markets. US ended in the green too, as summer mood and travel recoveries look promising.
US:
S&P 500 - up 0.15%
Nasdaq - up 0.29%
India:
Nifty 50 - up 0.78%
Sensex - up 0.73%
What’s brewing hot ☕
✅ That’s sting — Maruti was slapped with a $27 million fine by competition regulators in India because the company apparently forced its dealers to cut back on excessive discounts. While Maruti says it did so to reduce silly competition between dealers, regulators believe that if Maruti hadn’t stopped dealers from cutting prices, consumers would actually have afforded cars for much cheaper, and thereby Maruti’s intervention hurt end consumers. $27M ain’t exactly a tiny amount, and shareholders seemed pissed.
✅ Who gets the date — Byju’s is the new hot girl in class! Bankers across the country are apparently pitching the company’s management that it's the right time to consider an IPO, backing their proposals with generous valuations of $40-$45 billion. Morgan Stanely ain’t taking any chances and is apparently even willing to go up to $50 billion. Last we checked, Byju’s was expected to pull in $800 million in revenues this year, so at more than 50 times revenue, these are some insane bluffs being pulled straight out the wazoo.
Khata-days are back again 😎
After receding headlines to edtech, investing, and SaaS for a few months, Dukaan-tech is back with a bang. Khatabook wrapped up a $100 million Series C round from Tribe Capital, Sequoia, and other angels, revising valuation to $600 million.
For those unaware, the company helps local kiranas and SMEs digitize book-keeping via an app that tracks udhaar holders. Over time, Khatabook has also added functionalities simplifying staff and expense management. Monthly user base tops 10 million, touching 95% of districts nationwide.
With a wide net spread, the next lap of growth will focus on building more functionality, while planting hooks for a steady revenue stream.
Meanwhile undertaker rises from the dead, 👀
Hike, India’s indegenous answer to the Whastapps and the Discords of the world, had called it quits after failing to monetize. But a leaner, meaner Hike is now back in business with a new round.
Dollar amount wasn’t disclosed, but some heavyweights joined the cap table including Tinder co-founder Justin Mateen, Kunal Shah, Binny Bansal. Gameplay wise, Hike is apparently looking at the intersection of messaging, crypto, gaming, and virtual reality. Got the buzz words right for sure!
Paving way for some foreign $$ 💰
LIC is going to IPO soon at a ~$260B valuation, and GOI is apparently mulling allowing a foreign direct investment into the business before that, offering more than 10% of the company to an institutional buyer.
There’s only a few pension funds, insurance players, or institutional investors who’d be willing to buy a chunk that big, and if at all, then a few rules will have to be amended to make it possible. Bankers are expected to hit the roads with a pitch soon.
While we’re on foreign investments, ☝️
Relative to other more mature Asian markets, Indian stocks have performed exceptionally well so far this year (Sensex up 16%, Nifty 50 up 18%), and that has triggered a flurry of foreign capital inwards.
Over the last 12 months, ~$25 billion has moved into Indian markets leaving other Asian markets, while Korea and Taiwan have collectively lost ~$15 billion each. The trend could in part explain the seemingly never ending rally we’re seeing locally. Bloomberg has an exciting chart.
Satellite internet starting to look real 🛰️
We join you in struggling to keep count of Elon’s successful business. Musk’s satellite communications project, Starlink, has slowly started to move the needle too, apparently shipping 100K+ units of connectivity terminals to end users so far.
These are basic setups, kinda like TV-dishes, that go on the roof, and connect directly to the internet.
Spell out the details:
Selling each unit for $499 upfront cost, $99/month payment plan
Began launching sats only in 2018; Has 1,700 satellites in space already
Likely churning $120 million/year in revenues
Fact is, the mainstream market still remains woefully unconvinced that satellite internet business could work, given countless others like Dish, OneWeb, have tried and miserably failed.
Biggest drawbacks — this business has HIGH fixed costs to get the satellites up there, so companies inevitably have to push the cost to consumers.
Besides, the latency for a signal reaching a Sat, then reaching back to you, is much longer, which results in significant lag and slowdowns. So, slow + expensive internet!
But Musk has his way of innovating around it apparently.
Big picture — as polished as it may seem, this is barely an MVP. Musk is running the service with a constellation of 1,700 satellites. But meaningful coverage will need that number to multiply 15x. Progress so far should help convince some big ball investors to write fatter checks.
and this is not even the man’s full-time hustle, so that’s that!
Closing out — two nuggets on 2 different topics 🗼
🤧 Vodafone lost 4 million subscribers for the month of June, as spotty coverage, poor network, and doles from competitors saps its user base. Over the last 12 months, the company has lost nearly 22 million subs, bringing its total base to ~273M. Meanwhile, rival Airtel and Jio added 9 million in June.
Help from GOI is still at bay, but it’ll likely take years to reverse the decline here. Each day makes it worse.
🚗 Google’s Waymo will kick off its self-driving testing in San Francisco, its latest city for expansion, after a 3 year testing in a much kinder suburb of Arizona, US. Google is trying to reduce new city launch times to under a year, but so far, variability of conditions has proven a challenge.
What else are we snackin’ 🍿
🧟 Can no do - US is suing Cognizant for gaming its visa system, forcing immigrants to work on temporary visas so that they could be paid less than the H1B prevailing wage.
💪 We’ll take them in - Airbnb will host 20,000 Afghan refugees in its properties for free worldwide. Chesky didn’t disclose for how long, but we guess until immigration paperwork is complete.
Hit that 💚 if you liked today’s issue.
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Sensex is up; startup valuation high; big companies doing fine----Is fundamental support it? OR Sentimental/temporary hip?