High growth launches 🚀
Venture deals, Triller friendship, and Travel agents thrown a bone.
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Market summary: 📊
US:
S&P 500 - up 0.36%
Nasdaq 100 - up 0.82%
India:
Nifty 50 - up 0.051%
Sensex - up 0.12%
Odd match 🤔
Triller, a US based TikTok competitor, has inked a strategic deal with Reliance-owned music streaming service JioSaavn.
Per the partnership, Triller’s functionality will be embedded into JioSaavn, allowing users to create videos on the music streaming service with just one tap. Triller will also supply music videos to Saavn so that streamers can view songs - tightly integrating the two apps.
The partnership is kinda surprising since a couple weeks ago Reliance reached out to Bytedance to scoop up TikTok’s India operations. Even as those talks are pending, cozying up to a competitor makes little sense. But if you know RIL you know not to underestimate them.
Anyway, no streaming music app so far has jumped on the user generated short video bandwagon and considering Saavn’s sizable existing user base in India, the app could take off pretty fast filling in the gap left by TikTok.
Also, Triller is not taking the partnership lightly. The company has already poached some ByteDance executives to build a strong local team in India.
Stab them first, then sell them bandage 🤕
Pandemic battered online travel platforms are looking for creative ways to help salvage their businesses and MakeMyTrip has decided to open up booking services to Travel Agents - the very guys the company put out of business over the past decade.
Under a new platform called myPartner, MMT will enable agents to offer a variety of travel choices and booking options that agents can resell. MMT believes this will help the company diversify its revenue streams and be better prepared for when post-pandemic demand returns.
The company hopes on the other hand that its platform will offer Agents optionality, giving them access to lakhs of listings, and better deals. Read more.
Well, that may be true. But online travel aggregating platforms decimated small booking agents by using scale and unsustainable discounts. Agents who couldn’t keep up closed shops and vacated market share. Will they forget?
Tech IPO galore on Wall Street 🙌
Oddly exciting week on Wall Street as several flag bearing companies coming out of Silicon Valley are filing for IPOs. Let's do a run down real quick:
First up, Snowflake. The company’s data warehousing tech allows customers to store and manage data on the cloud, with little dependence on legacy on-premise architectures, making systems fast and inexpensive in many cases. The company has doubled its sales in the first half of 2020 alone and is one of fastest growing giants coming out of Silicon Valley to IPO. Investors can’t wait for this one to ring the stock exchange bell.
Moving onto Asana — the project and task management software vendor will do a direct listing, following the footsteps of its peers like Slack. Here’s a link explaining the difference between an IPO and a direct listing. Last year the company made $146 million in revenues, and was valued in the $5 billion range in its last private market capital raise.
Now the most controversial of all, Palantir Tech - the secretive data analytics firm founded by Peter Thiel has found itself in the middle of countless controversies, mostly for helping the government snoop on bad guys. Well, for the first time investors got a look inside the company’s financials and well, let’s just say things weren't as exciting. The company grew sales a modest 25% to $742.5 million last year, while losing a staggering $580 million to end the year.
But but… Palantir’s tech is indispensable to governments and other agencies that crunch data to tackle crime, aid in warfare, manage infrastructure and ensure citizen safety. Do they have tricks up their sleeves to improve metrics over time, including pricing leverage, product diversification, more tools? Investors may be willing to take that bet.
And then finally, a gaming bet that will make Sequoia capital verrryyyyyy rich. Unity, a cross platform video gaming engine that makes it easy to create 3-D games and other state of the art visual experiences, is going public. The company had $640M revenue over the last year, growing 38%, and was last valued at $6 billion in 2019 with Sequoia owning 24.1% stake.
Who’s raising cash? 💰
It's been a good fundraising week, so let's do a quick rundown of the hottest:
Customer support automation platform Verloop.ai pulled in $5 million as a part of its Series A, from Alpha Wave Incubation, along with existing investors IDFC Parampara and Kris Gopalakrishnan.
Founded in 2015, the company enables B2C businesses to automate customer conversations across channels and has over 150-plus enterprise clients, with big names like Cleartrip, Decathlon as regulars. Verloop has seen 200% growth in ARR over the last two years.
Next up,
Digital product distribution and referral platform OneCode raised a seed round from WaterBridge Ventures. The company connected citizen marketers to brands looking to spread their word, incentivizing individuals to share products through their social network for rewards.
Tapping into thick personal networks is deemed as the next frontier of social marketing and the platform’s prospects look bright. Prominent angels such as former Times Internet CSO Miten Sampat and Haptik founder Aakrit Vaish also took part in the round.
Finally, representing ed-tech,
Education lender Indian School Finance Company (ISFC) raised $30 million in a mix of equity and debt to finance Indian middle class’ education endeavours. The new investment round and joint lending partnerships with investors will enable ISFC to expand its current partner network from 6,500 schools to 15,000. It also plans to introduce offerings focusing on student financing for K-12, coaching and skill development.
What else are we snackin’ 🍿
🍎 Doubling down on India - Apple prepares for a new innings in India, thinking it can dethrone Android's dominance. The company is set to open an online store here next month. The iPhone maker currently sells its products in the country through third-party vendors and e-commerce firms but the company’s online store will be ready for operation in time for Diwali.
😷 COVID’s recent casualty - KFC will suspend its slogan “it’s finger lickin’ good”, calling it inappropriate in the current COVID-19 pandemic situation where personal hygiene has become top priority to stem transmission.
💉 Serum’s phase 2 trial begins - Pune based Serum Institute is set to begin phase 2 clinical trial of the Oxford COVID-19 vaccine that the company will help pharma company Astrazeneca bring to market.
🦉 The jokes write themselves… - Tomi Lahren, a US TV news commentator and champion for President Trump, thanked fellow Indians for encouraging Trump’s agenda. But her attempt to praise Trump in Hindi turned out to be a disaster. She literally translated “Trump is wise like an owl” meant to highlight the President’s wits, into “Trump is an Ullu”. Twitter had a field day of course.
✈️ Boeing’s got a customer - the struggling airline maker has secured an order from Poland’s biggest charter carrier, Enter Air for its 737 max. This is the first order in 9 months as Boeing awaits government approval after 2 of its 737 max planes crashed killing 346 people.
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