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Market summary: 📊
India took a beating, with markets now down more than 8% from all time highs as COVID 2.0 actively eats into any recovery we had seen. US had a down day too, with tech hammered pretty bad for no apparent reason.
US:
S&P 500 - down 0.53%
Nasdaq 100 - down 0.96%
India:
Nifty 50 - down 1.77%
Sensex - down 1.81%
What’s hot bruh? ☕
✅ Zucking dialin’ in—if you can’t buy em, copy the *** outta them! Facebook is rolling out a comprehensive suite of audio-first features, which in addition to including a basic Clubhouse clone, will include an audio version of their video-call product Rooms, and a feature to upload audio statuses on your FB feed, whoever asked for that! FB will also be working with Spotify to enable podcast discovery directly on its apps. We’re unsure how much this’ll help FB drive and retain engagement, but a $750 billion giant working overnight to strategize around a new suite of features certainly shows the far-reaching impact Clubhouse has had on the social industry.
✅ LIC picks Paytm—the pandemic forced millions to make their insurance premium payments online, and LIC quickly found its systems running on fumes processing all the volumes. So the corp asked the best of digital platforms to help them straighten out its problems. 17 platforms put in bids, and Paytm eventually emerged the winner. FYI, LIC processed some ₹60,000 crores in online payments volumes last year via cards, UPI, and other digital modes, processing 8 crore+ digital transactions, all of which should seriously help boost Paytm numbers. Consider that IPO pls?
SPONSORED
It’s where all the cool kids hang
Most banks, designed around the needs of the older generations, leave huge gaps that fail to meet the needs of today’s teenagers.
Yodaa’s out to change that. The company’s financial lifestyle app is designed for emerging demands of modern teenagers in India and SeAsia.
Users get their own cool card powered by Mastercard, with complete control over their finances, and a chance to master their money game early-on in life, through practical experience in a safe environment.
Besides, the Yodaa app also ensures parents have complete control and visibility over a teen’s expenses, making it super easy to set budgets, or even contribute to savings plans.
Yodaa’s mission is to raise a generation of financially aware teenagers for the new decade, and the product is part of Singapore-based financial technology company Atlantis.
Driven by ghosts 🔌
In an unfortunate accident, a Tesla ended up crashing into a tree in Texas, USA killing 2 individuals on the spot in a follow on fire. What’s nuts? Occupants of the vehicle were running on full self-driving (autopilot) mode, with literally no one sitting in the driver’s seat.
Authorities have countless times advised drivers that Tesla's “full autonomous” autopilot system by no means is comprehensive, but then… Musk’s mixed commentary on the efficacy of the AI, often calling it Level 5 autonomy (the best), pushes people to try it out to its full potential, and a split second is all it takes to cause irreversible damage.
It’s truly shameful, but the regulators are not having it anymore, and are closely looking at 20+ incidents to try and find if Tesla in any way overstepped its bounds.
Mess building up—these rising fatalities are becoming a huge nuisance for Tesla and its shareholders. Since the launch of the Autopilot self-driver, 175 deaths have occurred in a Tesla car, of which about 16 incidents had the self-driver fully engaged.
Also, the incident again brings out a major chicken-and-egg question for policy makers—when autonomy finally does take over, who should be held responsible for catastrophic events?
Latest from Venture Avenue 💰
Fintech’s hot run won’t skip a beat...
Stripe of India, Razorpay closed a $160 million Series E round, tripling its valuation to $3 billion, with Singapore’s GIC and Sequoia India leading the bid, with Ribbit Capital pitching in.
COVID enforced digitization offered Razorpay a remarkable boost. Details are scant but revenues in their core payments business expanded 50%+, with 400% growth in transaction volumes in a neobanking biz, and a newly launched credit product pushing out ₹700 crore in loan volumes each month. Total 5 million businesses use the company’s products.
Indian SMEs glue taped systems to run digital operations, and scrambled to stay alive through the pandemic, but as businesses slowly begin to realize that this is the way to go, they’d be big time consumers for payment infrastructure and related products over the next few years.
And boy can businesses like Razorpay scale big—if Stripe is any indicator of a market benchmark, the company recently raised at a $95B+ valuation, with revenues topping $7B+, growing 70% in 2020—which kinda shows sky's the limit here.
Come on man… 🏏
We ask for more tech-IPOs, all we get are US SPACs...
Rumors are, Dream11 is cleaning up for a public bid, but unfortunately it's going to be a SPAC listing on Wall Street.
Talks are in full swing with JP Morgan, Morgan Stanley, and Citigroup all pitching for a chance to lead the transaction, and the Nasdaq listing may come as early as next year. Hopes are set for a $1.5 billion raise, with valuation set to about $6 billion.
FYI, that’s the 3rd major player exposed to a high-growth theme in India that we’re losing to a US bound SPAC this year, after Flipkart and Renew Power.
And perhaps we should’ve seen this coming—Dream 11 co-founder sits on the board of Think Elevation Capital, a SPAC created by Elevation Cap and Think investments, solely with plans of taking Indian giants to prom on Wall Street, having recently raised a $250 million war chest.
In any case, with the IPL season just picking pace, we’re guessing the stats on engagement are through the roof, and there’s no better time for Dream 11 to be pitching investors than now.
Bottomline: with 100+ SPAC deals so far this year, western markets are quickly running out of local high-flying businesses to take to the SPAC feast, which means leading growth investors are slowly starting to invite bids from India and other Asian markets to the party.
We’re happy for the ventures, but it sucks that local retail investors will be dried out from capitalizing on these generational growth trends.
Closing out—The Flash Crash ✋
Making new records is routine in the crypto line of work….
The weekend crypto sell off saw nearly $10 billion worth of liquidations (aka accounts fully emptying up and leaving the party) over 24 hours on Sunday, which led to a 14% overnight crash in prices on average, shrinking total crypto market cap to $2.2 trillion.
Bunch of factors drove the pull back—firstly, a range of margin calls were hit causing a domino effect, basically hodlers forced to automatically sell by their exchanges when prices fell below certain levels.
Then there were rumors that the US treasury is looking to nail institutions for not being very friendly with data sharing around money laundering in crypto.
Lastly, there was a power blackout incident in the Xinjiang region of China—which runs one of the largest bitcoin mining pools, which saw BTC mining hash rates tank 50% at one point.
Prices have since then stabilized though, and I guess we’re all set for another ride up to the moon.
What else are we snackin’ 🍿
📽️Finally, stepping in - rising cases prompt a major policy change, and the government will allow everyone above the age of 18 to get a shot of the COVID-19 vaccine from May 1st. States will be allowed to directly purchase doses from manufacturers to speed things up, and suppress the new case numbers that show no respite.
💉 Coming in hot - tech earnings kick off this week. Netflix will meet with investors on Tuesday—any sign of weakness on new subscriber additions could be a major problem. Snapchat has its date on Thursday—the business promised 50%+ growth rates for the next few years, but Evan Spiegel will be judged on whether he can control ballooning costs. Party on!
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