Here we go again 👀

New unicorns, Tata comes out at the top, and Reliance takes no breaks.

Morning folks, HNY! ☕

21 either been a kick-ass year, or a lame farce, depending on who you ask. Lets just hope the year end break was relaxing for all!

Business in India has kicked off on a high already — we already have a unicorn in the house, acquisitions pouring in, and mega IPOs lined up for the quarter. Let's hit it 💸

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New year, new problems ☕ 

👀 Caught slippin' — India’s tax-babus got WazirX to cough up almost ₹50 crores in unpaid taxes. Wazir was apparently collecting commissions from consumers on literally all crypto transactions — trading, deposits, withdrawals, but was paying out taxes on commissions earned from transactions made in rupees only, and not those made using Wazir’s native token WRX. Rookie moves. Several other firms were asked to pay ₹70 crore+ in taxes on similar charges.

📈 New year, new IPOs — nearly 25 companies have lined up bids to raise over ₹44K crores from Indian public markets over the next 3 months, kicking off yet another eventful year. Oyo, Delhivery represent the tech/startup platoon, while Adani Wilmar, Emcure Pharma Medanta and others represent the old-school boys club. Those counting on market exuberance to fade in 2022 gonna have to wait. Fingers crossed.

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Tata comes out at the top 🚗

What happened — thanks to its newfound mojo, a much sexier vehicle line-up, and a shrewd early focus on EVs, Tata Motors just had one of its best years ever — toppling Hyundai to become India’s 2nd best selling automaker for 2021.

For December alone, Tata sold 35,300 cars, beating Hyundai’s 32K, finishing the year with 3.31 lakh unit sales. All of this amidst crippling semiconductor shortages makes it even more exciting (which actually disadvantaged Hyundai in December big time).

Anyway, the markets were anticipating Tata’s win for long — rewarding stock up 152%+ in the past 12 months!

EV business is getting noticed — Tata sold 10K+ electric cars since April this year. The budget-friendly Nexon is cutting deep into India’s value focused market than most imagined early on.

Big picture — dislocating budget-king Maruti, who sells 1.3 million+ cars a year, is a tough gig. But looming EV-fication, and Maruti’s own problems, persistent semi shortages, present an interesting opportunity for camp T this decade.

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First unicorn in the house 🦄 

Hasn’t been 2 days, the meter is already ringing. Mamaearth, the natural products based D2C brand, raised $52 million from Sequoia, Sofina, and a few others, at a $1.15 billion valuation!

The holding company that runs Mamaearth runs 3 sister-D2C brands — Mamaearth, a cosmetics play called The Derma Co., and then face-products under the label Aqualogica. Products are sold via an omnichannel model — online and across 1,000 cities, bringing home $1 billion in GMV.

Fresh funds will go to launching new independent brands, and scaling tech.

Then, quickly looking an another unicorn from last week 👇 

GlobalBees picked up $110 million for its Series B from Premji Invest, FirstCry and Softbank, at a $1.1 billion valuation — becoming India’s 2nd ecommerce roll up unicorn!

To remind ya, these businesses go out and buy promising promising digital brands that operate on Amazon, scaling them in an organized fashion. GB has acquired 8 brands already in categories like personal care, homecare and fashion till now.

New capital will go to win more deals, as the space heats up.

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Quick look at Reliance’s latest bet 🔌 

NY or not, Mota bhai takes no breaks. Reliance used the holiday downtime to wrap up another clean energy acquisition — buying out Faradion, a UK based battery-tech player for $135 million.

That’ll be Reliance’s 3rd straight acquisition in the space after it announced mega plans to transform the oil energy empire towards a green future, earlier in 2021.

Faradion is one of the world’s leading battery tech players (pioneering non-aqueous sodium-ion batteries), which are much cheaper and energy efficient compared to those made from nickel and cobalt.

Game play — in addition to building power storage systems, Reliance could also leverage the tech to support India’s electric vehicle demand as a battery supplier. RIL plans on spending an additional $35 million to accelerate production.

Big plans — Reliance has set an audacious target of hitting 100GW in clean energy production capacity by 2030, almost 22% of all the target set by India.

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Closing Out — New Year Tequilas drive fortunes for delivery companies 🥳 

Lemons, and cakes, and poppers, and pizzas — all helped last mile delivery platforms, from food to grocery, blast record volumes on new years eve.

Zomato and Swiggy obviously led the party — both making 2 million+ deliveries each. ZOM sold ₹100 crores+ worth of stuff, a 30% bump from last year, while Swiggy’s volumes jumped 62% YoY.

Founders of both companies broke keyboards live-tweeting stats for the Twitter junta stuck at boring parties. Thanks Deepi.

Bottomline — has been a big year for delivery companies. Better believe those new systems (from Blinkit to Zepto to Instamart) were stress tested for survival.

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What else are we Snackin’ 🍿

📱 End of an era — BlackBerry finally gives up after a decade+ fight. All phones and tablets running on the OG BlackBerry software will stop operating from January 4th. Android devices will work though.

🐶 Shiba DAO — Shiba Inu, $DOGE’s rival, launched a DAO called Doggy DAO, to give users authority on selecting crypto projects worth pursuing. This life.

💪 Going solid — GST collections crossed ₹1 lakh crores mark for the sixth successive month in December. Business is good!

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Hit that 💚 if you liked today’s issue.

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