Here we go again 🙄
More unicorns, Zoom’s decline, and Mobikwick’s decision.
Market summary: 📊
Some relief in India on Tuesday, but we’re still way down in the hole. US had a mixed day once again, with old school stocks favored, and tech continuing its sell off.
US:
S&P 500 - up 0.17%
Nasdaq - down 0.45%
India:
Nifty 50 - up 0.50%
Sensex - up 0.34%
What’s brewing hot ☕
1️⃣ Grooming balls is a real business — the latest hot SPAC in town is D2C brand Manscaped, which sells men’s grooming products specifically for the southern region lol. Manscaped will raise about $305 million in the deal to take them public, at a billion dollar valuation, which doesn’t look as bad when compared against the ~$280 million in annual revenue the business makes. D2C products have had a hit or miss run so far, but brands leading with content, and a strong connection with the community, seem to be doing fine.
2️⃣ Killed it — Latent View shows how it's done. The modestly priced IPO blew the doors off at open, ending the day at a 148% premium to the IPO price. Concerns that India’s IPO party may be over were allayed, with most problems clearly isolated to few stocks with bloated valuations and no substance. FWIW, PayTM made a resounding recovery yesterday, with stock finishing up more than 9%. Looks like the October sales data worked.
Crypto ban chatter is back 🙄
What happened — the entire crypto industry shat-a-brick after GOI decided to table its crypto-regulation bill as an agenda-item for the upcoming winter session of the parliament.
No specifics on what’s in the bill, or what’s not, are known yet… but the language summarizing the bill on the Lok Sabha agenda sounded a bit terse (typical of GOI), which most news-outlets picked as blanket ban in the making. Details be damned. 🙄
So ban or no ban — nobody knows. The summary suggests GOI wants to stop most crypto-projects outside of a select few with meaningful end use-cases, while creating a framework for a RBI-backed crypto project.
FWIW, India has about 15 million people with about $6 billion in assets invested in crypto right now, per Economic times and as of yesterday, all local exchanges were seeing bloodbaths.
Big picture — India’s local crypto exchanges have fully exploited GOI’s silence by pushing limits on marketing and engaging in a meaningless market share wars. Some regulatory heat was overdue.
Anaaathaa unicorn in the house baby 🦄
NoBroker, a housing marketplace, closed a $210 million Series E from speed-dealing king Tiger Global, as well as General Atlantic and a few others. Valuation was doubled to $1 billion! 🔥
NoBroker’s marketplace allows people to find apartments for rent and purchase without nosy, expensive middlemen who do nothing but send you a text message with a bunch of listings for a hefty ₹30K commission. NoBroker on the other hand charges ₹2K for a personal concierge.
The business is also making money by offering loans for rent payments, housekeeping services, moving support, and other adjacent services, serving 16 million+ people across 6 major cities.
Meanwhile, in the wild wild west of crypto ☝️
MoonPay, a Miami-based crypto wallet startup, raised a $555-freaking million Series A, for its first ever fundraise, again from Tiger Global and Coatue, at a $3.4 billion valuation.
MoonPay basically sells a software that startups can integrate into their product to make crypto buying and selling extremely simple (think Stripe, but to buy coins). 7 million+ end customers have used the services till now, processing over $2 billion in transactions.
Thank you for your service, Zoom ☹️
Zoom fatigue is real, office-meetings are back, and the shift is more than evident in Zoom’s slowing engagement and revenue growth numbers.
Quick look at the 3rd quarter:
Revenues of $1.05 billion, up just 35% YoY
Net Income of $340 million, up 71% YoY
For the next quarter, Zoom is expecting growth to be under 20%!
That’s the slowest growth quarter Zoom has reported since like 2018! Stock is already down more than 56% from pandemic highs.
Meanwhile, Zoom is betting on contact center software (software used to run call centers) and Zoom Rooms, which helps people schedule meeting rooms in the office, to revive growth.
Long shot.
Closing out — Mobikwick feels the squeeze 🤕
It’s happening already… PayTM’s botched IPO is making fintech as well as the broad venture market nervous. Rival Mobikwick will delay its plans for a while, the founder told Reuters.
That doesn’t solve the problem though. Many of these firms were counting on public money to act as a vital booster to shoot them out of the loss-making sink-hole they’re in. Now with that option delayed, lining up $$ as coffers run dry will be harder.
We’re entering uncharted territory here.
What else are we snackin’ 🍿
🛍️ Go live baby - Myntra launched a live shopping platform, M-Live, trying to catch up with consumer needs.
📈 You say, I do - Vodafone Idea will follow Airtel in hiking prices for its plans by 25% from November 25, hoping that helps change things a bit.
👊 JPM vs. Elon — JP Morgan is suing Tesla for not paying the bank money it owes via a complex financial arrangement back in 2013 when Tesla was struggling. Musk’s response? I’ll give you 1 star on Yelp.
Hit that 💚 if you liked today’s issue.
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