Instagram King goes Broke 🤣
Startups innovate, TikTok roasted, and people are abandoning cities.
Hi 👋, Tanvi here.
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Stock market summary:
US - S&P 500 down 1.05% % 🔽
India - Sensex up 0.56% 🔼
The King of Instagram is Broke 😢
Y’all remember Dan Bilzerian, the multimillionaire Instagram king?
So before the pandemic struck and half of humanity went into lockdown, Bilzerian threw one last party on valentines eve, with over 2,500 guests in his LA mansion. Needless to say, the party was extravagant beyond imagination. Using the occasion, Dan launched his latest venture, a premium vodka containing alkaline water, under Ignite brand of consumer products he owns.
Dan had spent millions on building up the brand from scratch, raking up majority of the costs through his playboy style of marketing.
However, the pandemic has now started to squeeze the business and Ignite’s partying has come to a standstill, and without marketing the brands popularity is tanking.
Dan, who uses his social life and the glamour around jets, cars, casinos and scantily clad women, is now locked down in his apartment, unable to travel as vigorously as he’d like to and is raking up costs associated with cancelled marketing events.
Dan’s company that is listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange is attracting the wrath of angry investors with very little revenue coming in. As a recession looms, investors are further worried that consumers may never have the money to buy Bilzerian’s products in the short term and are fleeing away from investing in the company any more.
According to a recent post on social media, Bilzerian is working on a book about himself. While that may be a noble thing to do, will that be enough to put a stop to millions of dollars in losses each month? Barely.
Startups to the rescue 😷
Necessity is the mother of innovation, this IIT Madras startup is proving that right.
The startup has developed a technology that can coat nano particle based antimicrobial agents on the fabric which is used to make Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) for front-line health workers which will inactivate the virus that is present on the gear. The gear will also prevent the transfer of the virus from the PPE user to others.
The nano particle antimicrobial agent has been developed with a number of metal oxides which neutralize the virus. As soon as the virus comes in contact with the coated particles, its structure gets permanently disintegrated.
The coating machine works to impregnate the agent on the fabric. The metal oxides that neutralize the virus do not leach from the fabric while washing and the coatings are expected to be effective for about 60 wash cycles rendering the fabric reusable.
However, the virus is completely new and to test the efficacy in neutralizing the virus, the prototype of the coating machine and nano particle antimicrobial agent will be tested by the startup, Muse Wearables. The startup is also planning on using this technology to develop PPE, N95 masks and food packaging bags.
Disney genius joins TikTok 🎬
Kevin Mayer, a famed executive at Disney resigned from Walt Disney and is set to join TikTok as the new CEO of the company. Kevin earlier led the streaming platform of Disney that competed with Netflix. 🔆
Mayer will also serve as Chief Operating Officer of Byte Dance, which is the holding company that owns TikTok. The video sharing app seems to have gained a lot of popularity during the pandemic and has been a lockdown sweetheart especially in America where youngsters and well as elders have flocked to it for entertainment.
The app has now been downloaded 2 Billion times worldwide, with over 175 Million downloads in the USA alone. For a Chinese owned company, TikTok is the biggest digital success so far to happen in the western world.
But the story is completely different here in India.
Despite TikTok’s popularity, citizens of India are calling for a nationwide ban on the app after objectionable content was posted by a creator, objectifying women and trivializing rape. The platform was flooded by active citizens with terrible reviews on the play store, and was later berated by the Chair of the National Women’s Commission of India Ms. Rekha Sharma.
Tiktok’s content moderation policies have often come under fire for being too lax as influencers and content creators often cross social limits in order to garner likes and engagement.
What Else Are We Snackin’🍿
🤥China caves in to pressure from WHO, allows probe of virus origin
💊I have been taking Hydroxychloroquine for a week now, says Trump
Tweet of the day -
Major cities worldwide are coming under immense pressure to keep residents interested as the pandemic has changed what it means to be living there. Tightly packed residents, living on top of each other in towering buildings, breathing into each other on crowded trains is not proving to be ideal.
Cities attracted top talent primarily because the opportunities of working in large companies were too attractive to pass up on. But now with remote work so common, you could live pretty much anywhere with good internet connection and keep working.
As a result, major cities like San Francisco (the hub of global tech), New York, London, Tokyo and others have begun losing residents to much quainter towns.
Also, many millennials who have worked in these cities for decade plus now are looking to retire into family lives, with many planning on raising children and having families, for which cities are not necessarily suited.
Some skeptics are also going far enough to say that huge metropolis cities are a thing of the past now and their importance will continue to diminish after the pandemic.
What do you guys think? Reply and let us know.
Hope you took a thing or two away from today’s edition. 😀
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