Everything is fintech 💰
Big balls raises, Netflix's moves, and Invesco goes rogue.
Market summary: 📊
India continued to lose ground as anxious investors reap gains and move to the sidelines. US recovered a tiny bit from the previous day’s flogging.
US:
S&P 500 - up 0.16%
Nasdaq - down 0.12%
India:
Nifty 50 - down 0.21%
Sensex - down 0.43%
What’s brewing hot ☕
✅ Banned over insider trading — SEBI took on a couple of IT dudes from INFY and Wipro over charges of insider trading, banning both individuals from trading in the market going ahead. Apparently, the duo had access to non-public information about the $1.5 billion cloud-IT deal that Infosys had inked with global investing giant Vanguard, which the geniuses used to trade and bring home a ₹2.6 crores worth of windfall, lol.
✅ Keep your promises — Oyo has to jump a few legal hoops prior to its IPO, as competitor Zo rooms drags the company to the Delhi High Court over a botched acquisition deal. In 2015, Oyo had promised to acquire Zo, offered them a term sheet even, but the talks fell through for whatever reason. Zo, since then, has been saying that Oyo’s offer was actually binding, but Oyo lawyers don’t agree. Oyo went on to raise gazillions of dollars after this, but Zo maintains it should get 7% stock in the company — amounting to ~$700 million, and demands it be recognized on IPO filings. Out-of-court settlement seems quite likely.
AngelList dipping toes into fintech 👣
The venture investing tool is rolling out a comprehensive platform that wraps equity management, business incorporation, and banking products, into a single product — making a bold move into full-stack founder-services.
Quick look at the deets:
Product will be called AngelList Stack
Offers an end-to-end admin platform that simplifies tasks from incorporating a business (in the US), to issuing stock
Integrated bank account brings physical and virtual cards, wires, spend management and all other bells and whistles
AngelList already offers tools to simplify venture fundraising — so offering products for admin-management isn’t too far a shot, but the move pits the platform directly against ambitions of Stripe, business neo-banks like Bank Mercury, as well as platforms simplifying equity management such as Carta.
Big picture — another prime example of how basic financial products get “featurized”, and are embraced by more platforms with heavy distribution that are looking to sink their teeth deeper.
Big Balls raises in Startup Town 💰
Of course edtek — Vedantu becomes India’s 5th unicorn in the ed-tech space after raising $100 million from ABC World Asia, Tiger Global and a few others, doubling valuation to $1 billion.
If you’re totally out of sync, the company runs a platform offering live coaching to K-12 students as well as IIT aspirants, serving over 35 million students, which became extremely popular when COVID shut offline coaching classes.
Also, we’re guessing recent rumors of a takeout by Byjus helped get those checks signed a bit faster.
Then onto two slightly-early mega rounds, 🤯
Enterprise debt platform CredAvenue, which basically connects large firms and HNIs looking to make debt investments with other firms looking to raise $$, closed on a massive-ass Series A round — pulling in $90 million from Sequoia and Lightspeed. 1500+ enterprises and 750 lenders transact on the platform, with deal volumes topping $9 billion. Not bad for a Series A!
Then in Healthcare, Mfine, which facilitates home testing, doctor appointments, as well as medicine delivery, wrapped up a $48 million Series C round from Moore Strategic Ventures and BEENEXT. Mfine reaches 3 million users, has been growing 15% monthly since COVID’s onset, and plans on putting the $ to build a virtual-hospital.
Netflix is dead serious about games 🎮
What happened — after announcing its move into gaming a few months back, NFLX made its first gaming related acquisition, buying out Night School Studio, a 21-employee game developer based in Hollywood, best known for the game Oxenfree.
Why care — Night School is known to make these simple narrative based games — with rich graphics like other heavy games, but at its core a simple story that flows like a movie, meant to be enjoyed by folks who aren’t power-gamers.
The acquisition gives some hints into the casual-gaming and interactive content direction Netflix wants to chase — appealing to everyday viewers, vs. those that spend days glued to a ps4 or Xbox.
Closing out — Invesco goes all rogue 🥴
Punit Goenka bought himself some time by walking in with the Sony merger deal, but Zee’s revolting shareholders aren’t buying any of that BS.
What happened — after making their protest well known, Invesco and the other revolting shareholders decided to lawyer up — approaching the National Company Law Tribunal last night — claiming Zee is in the wrong for NOT calling a general meeting immediately to oust its current board and CEO. The case will be heard today!
Invesco isn’t exactly opposed to the Sony merger, but is 100% not okay with Zee’s management anywhere near the boardroom of the new company going ahead
Bottomline — Markets seem puzzled that Invesco was quick to go the legal route, which hints we’re in for a long fight before this ends.
What else are we Snackin’ 🍿
🧔 New man - Fumio Kishida was elected the new President of Japan last night.
🤞 Birla goes live - Aditya Birla AMC’s IPO opened to lukewarm reception yesterday, with stock subscribed 0.53 times by end of day. Will be live until October 1.
Hit that 💚 if you liked today’s issue.
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