Market summary: 📊
India took it easy on Friday, ending the day flat after what has been phenomenal 2 weeks to kick off 2022. US continued to bounce all over, finishing the week in the green.
US:
S&P 500 - up 0.082%
Nasdaq - up 0.75%
India:
Nifty 50 - down 0.01%
Sensex - down 0.02%
Weekend caffeine injection ☕
🖌️ NFT hub — China hates crypto, banned it, even banned Bitcoin mining. But apparently there’s a soft corner in the dragon’s heart for NFTs. Blockchain Services Network, a state-run Blockchain company, is being tasked to design and implement a comprehensive NFT infrastructure with a newly designed Blockchain — operable only within the nation, allowing people to trade stuff. The network will be 24x7 monitored by the Chinese for bad behavior and all trading will be in the Yuan. Decentralization?
Birla beefs up its fashion portfolio 👗
What’s poppin’ — Aditya Birla Fashion is following Reliance in making sure its ethnic wear portfolio is bright and shiny — now spending ₹90 crores to acquire a 51% stake in popular design label House of Masaba.
The 13 year old label, founded by designer Masaba Gupta, sells ethnic outfits, casual dresses, beauty and skin accessories, through a nationwide retail network. Revenues topped some ₹14 crores last year, hit by COVID, but management is projecting a 2x growth rate for 2022.
Not the first rodeo for Birla though — who has acquired several luxury designer brands, including Sabyasachi and Tarun Tahiliani’s flagship just within last year.
Birla hopes these acquisitions help strengthen its creative and design game as it warms up to the newfound, changing tastes of India’s millennials and GenZ.
Big picture — Both Reliance and Birla are gunning for an opportunity to build a Zara or H&M like fast-fashion behemoth in India’s ethnic-wear space. ✌️
Venture Street was busy on Friday 💰
Thrasio is starting to make its local clones sweat. The global e-commerce rollup giant acquired a majority stake in a local brand called Lifelong Online in a $200 million deal, making its first bet in India.
Lifelong sells kitchen, grooming, fitness and other lifestyle appliances on popular ecommerce websites in India. The investment comes barely months after Thrasio had announced its plans to deploy $500M+ in India over the next few years.
Worth mentioning — 2 Indian companies, GlobalBees and Mensa, are unicorns in the space. Market’s ready for steamy wars.
Meanwhile, in the EV space 🔌
EVage, an India based electric-truck manufacturing player, closed a $28 million seed round from western VC firm RedBlue Cap.
EVage designs and sells electric trucks for last mile deliveries, currently with Amazon being one of its largest clients. For years the company had been retrofitting old trucks with an electric powertrain, but is now looking to design them ground up.
Newest model called the Model.X (Tesla much?), built in a factory outside of Delhi, will be released commercially by this year. Promising fo sho! 👍
That’s all we have for today folks! Quick look at major stuff that went down this week…
💰 Reliance bought a hotel in New York — Reliance made a surprise move to purchase one of New York City’s favorite luxury hotels — the Mandarin Oriental, in a $270 million+ deal. Mota bhai ain’t new to the game. RIL already owns ~20% of Oberoi Hotels in India, as well as London’s iconic Stoke Park, which they bought for a similar mega price tag last year.
😎 Pine Labs is going to Wall Street — the 25-year old Indian fintech giant at the forefront of the broad payments and merchant tooling revolution we witnessed over the past 5 years, is going public in the US, trying to raise $500 million, at a $7 billion valuation. Outlook is quite favorable with strong leadership, a great reputation, and a B2B heavy focus, which means less freebies and better unit economics.
🎮 GTA maker acquires FarmVille — Take-Two Interactive, the makers of notorious crime game GTA, made a $12.7 billion buyout offer to Zynga. Take-Two dominates PC and console gaming, and with this move hopes to secure its future in the mobile gaming world — which is growing much faster. Sweet exit for Zynga whose stock had been languishing for almost a decade.
🗼 GOI now owns Vodafone Idea — the Government of India had two options. Step in and rescue Vodafone and save India’s telco market to see another day, or let the giant burn itself. Simple choice. In exchange for the dues owed by Vodafone, GOI will acquire a 35.8% stake in the business, making the Indian state the largest shareholder in the company. That leaves Vodafone to stop worrying about its piling dues and show some life competing in the market.
🛢 Vedanta wants to buy BPCL 💰 – the largest mineral mining operation in the country, made a $12 billion buyout offer for GOI’s petroleum company, BPCL. GOI had been looking to offload BPCL for a while now, as part of its broader divestment agenda, but no meaningful bids came in after COVID threw the energy market in a twist. So far GOI doesn’t seem too excited by the price tag.
🦄 Unicorn number 3 – lastly, LEAD School, a curriculum design service, raised a $100 million at a $1.1 billion valuation, becoming the third unicorn for 2022. LEAD works with schools focusing on low-income students, giving them a software platform to manage ops, design curriculum, order materials, and other functions, while helping improve learning outcomes. Revenues are set to top $80 million this year.
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