It keeps falling 📉
Theranos trial, Venture raises, and Airtel's had enough.
Market summary: 📊
It’s a bloodbath. India turned lower sharply on Monday, led by PayTM’s dumpster fire. US had a big sell off too, with growth-tech flogged in the open.
US:
S&P 500 - down 0.32%
Nasdaq - down 1.26%
India:
Nifty 50 - down 1.96%
Sensex - down 1.96%
What’s brewing hot ☕
1️⃣ Swiggy got juice — Prosus, an investor in Swiggy, gave some hints into the company’s financials during its own regulatory filings. Swiggy’s food-delivery biz grew 56% YoY for the period of April to September, with order volumes growing 69% YoY — all pointing at continued momentum after COVID. Grocery delivery is showing solid momentum too, growing at 75%+ rates, which explains why Zomato is soo in love with Grofers lately. Warming up the stage for a listing!
2️⃣ Liz’s last act — the Theranos trial took a weird turn when founder Elizabeth Holmes decided to testify. Quite unusual for defendants to do so, given a tiny misstep or comment and you could end up incriminating yourself. Holmes’ testimony will go on for a couple more days where she’d be grilled on fake claims she made to investors to keep pulling checks for her blood-detection system, very well knowing it wasn’t going anywhere.
PayTM keeps falling ⚰️
Bunch of fickle-fingered kids tch! PayTM continued to drop like a rock on Monday — ending the day down another 13%.
Coupled with last week’s drop, stock has lost almost 40% of its value from the IPO — leaving investors $900 million into the water so far.
Meanwhile, the founder is drawing comparisons with Tesla, who’s stock faced years of pressure to come out at the top in a grand slam run. Bit too far?
Management also tried doing some massaging, disclosing October “progress” in a regulatory filing hoping to put some water on the fire. Thanks to a solid festive season, total volumes processed by the platform grew 131% YoY to $11.2 billion for the month. Monthly transacting users jumped 35% to 63 million, while the lending biz grew a solid 472% YoY by volumes. Here’s the filing.
Now if that’s sustained momentum, or just a 1-month shot in the arm because of diwali, we’ll see. Market’s clearly aren’t buying.
Big picture — world is watching the dumpster fire. Spreadsheets from Dalal Street to Bengaluru will be revised, and valuations across the board should feel some pressure.
While we’re on IPOs, ☝️
Go Fashion is kicking ass — oversubscribed almost 136x by its 3rd day. FYI, Go sells women’s active and other bottom-wear clothing via an omnichannel model, with a pretty widely recognizable brand, and decent fundamentals. Doing its part to save the party!
What’s poppin’ on venture street 💸
Online coffee seller, Sleepy Owl, raised a $6.5 million Series A from Rukam Capital and DSG Consumer Partners.
Well known within tech-circles, Sleepy Owl sells everything from beans to ready-made bottled brews — available online as well as through a thick offline-network nationwide. COVID did some damage to growth-momentum, but revenues are projected to top $8 million for the next 12 months! We ❤️ their stuff BTW!
Moving onto Healthcare, 🏥
OneCare, a startup helping treat diabetes, closed a $1M pre-seed round from Multiply Ventures, Better Capital and a host of angel investors. OneCare sells a full-stack software platform (back office + consumer app) to clinics to help them connect with patients, and create custom, patient-specific health programs.
Quick look an old-school IPO 📜
Jesons Industries, a Mumbai based manufacturer of specialty chemicals and tapes, filed its IPO docs for a ₹900 crores raise from the public markets.
Jesons, a classic old-school chems play, is a leading supplier of specialty coating emulsions which it sells to paints markers — owning a 30% market share there, as well as a specific-type of adhesive most commonly found in tapes, labels, and other similar products.
Business made ₹1,086 crores in revenues this year, with ~₹93 crores in profits. Rising chemical costs and supply problems are major headwinds right now though! Quick link to the DRHP.
Why care — with the growth-balloons busting open, perhaps a good time to take shelter under the shade of sturdy old trees.
Closing out — we ain’t done with Roll ups yet 💰
OpenStore, founded by ex-Square execs like Keith Rabois, raised a $75 million round at a $750 million valuation — barely 6 months after founding.
OpenStore, unlike Thrasio or Mensa, focuses exclusively on Shopify businesses, buying popular brands on the platform. They’re also building a software-heavy approach to carry out acquisitions — hoping to create a metric based, automated, repeatable process that scales to buying out 1 brand a day, at least.
Multiple acquisitions have already been made, with $10M+ in net revenues.
Worth mentioning — OpenStore is backed by an ex-Square, ex-OpenDoor team, both with $120B in market cap between them. Serious effort for sho!
What else are we Snackin’ 🍿
👋 Outta here - ByteDance, the TikTok owner, is shutting down its edtech business in India. Didn’t even know that was a thing.
🤷♂️ Enough is enough - Airtel is increasing its tariff plans by 20-25% from November 26, looking to get India’s telco industry out of the death pit Jio dragged everyone into.
🎙️ Adele talks, SPOT listens - Spotify will stop playing albums on shuffle by default, deciding its better to play them in the order the artist intended, after Adele’s request.
Hit that 💚 if you liked today’s issue.
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PayTM- May be some brake to crazy valuation and crazy investors.