Jio winning 👏

Intel's big plans, Venture deal, and IBM's struggle.

Morning Coffee fam! 👋

Happy Monday. Ain’t much of a happy day in the markets though. Nasdaq is crashing — down 14%+ from its November peak. Stonkers are being taught lessons in value, while Crypto-bros have been wiped off, losing $1 trillion+ over the past week.

India has relatively been okay, but major indices are losing ground. Best thing one could possibly do is avoid looking at the portfolio and just keep those SIPs running. Let’s hit it! 🙌

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What’s brewing hot? ☕

👊 America wants its Semis back — Intel is committing to spend over $20 billion to build 2 semi-fabrication units in the sleepy state of Ohio, USA — in what Intel says would be “largest silicon manufacturing location on the planet”. If things go well, Intel says it’s doubling down with $80 billion more, to build 8 more plants. The move is significant for 2 reasons — first, its supposed to mark Intel’s comeback as a contract manufacturer, and second, it signals the west’s shift away from China and east-Asia for its semi needs, as they learn a valuable lesson during the pandemic.

🖖 Europeans wreck digital ads — the EU, well known for its aggression against big tech, brought in a whole new set of laws yesterday to severely limit digital advertising. Tracking without permissions, showing pop-ups to ask data permissions, ad-targeting at minors, not making it 1-click easy to stop sharing data — and many other things will be penalized. Apparently, a draft bill was shared with everyone, but then the politicians added some last minute changes tightening the nuts and bolts even harder, leaving little breathing room for tech-platforms.

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Reliance extended its lead ✊

What happened — Reliance’s flywheel won’t skip a beat, blasting record growth rates for the last 3 months, beating Dalal Street’s estimates by a mile.

Growth came from all pockets — retail, digital, telecom, as well as the old school oil and chemicals empire. Quick look at key stats:

• Revenues topped ₹1.91 lakh crores, up a whopping 54% YoY

• Profits jumped 42% YoY, to ₹18.5K crores

• Higher oil prices and rise in consumption (post COVID), helped the old empire grow 57% — with better margins

Meanwhile, festive season and folks slowly beginning to step out helped the retail business grow 52% YoY to ₹57.7K crores — which are outstanding numbers for a business that size!

Lastly, Jio didn’t disappoint either, adding 10.2 million new subscribers, taking total count to 421 million, despite Reliance now slowly raising prices on consumers.

And while we’re on telecom,  🤞

GOI’s latest entrepreneurial venture, Vodafone-Idea, continued to rake up losses and dues — losing almost a billion dollars last quarter. Revenues dropped, subscribers churned (some 5.8 million gone), and… do we need to keep going?

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Latest from Venture City 👋

Zuper, a SaaS platform that helps brands manage field-service requests, raised a $13 million Series A, led by FUSE, Sequoia, and even HubSpot.

Ever had a technician sent to repair your AC, who then said he needs to order a part and made you sleep sweat-drenched for like 8 more weeks? Well Zuper’s platform helps brands (think electronics, appliances, furniture etc.) manage their field service requests in a unified portal — so that everyone has visibility into what needs to be done, what parts need to be ordered, billing, payments, and such.

Started in Seattle, the SaaS company operates mostly out on India, but has 100 global enterprise customers, who have to date processed $20M+ work orders through its service, with 140% net retention rates!

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IBM dumps Watson, finally 👋 

What’s poppin’ — IBM finally managed to find a buyer for its ailing healthcare business Watson Health — with PE firm Francisco Partners willing to pay $1 billion for it.

Watson, launched to much fanfare as the NEXT BIG THING in AI, turned out to be mostly hot air and marketing, struggling to sell a dime worth of software, while losses stood in billions.

Meanwhile IBM missed the big revolution of cloud-computing, and its stock has been dead money for over 7 years now. Even the most patient investors were getting super angsty.

Anyway, so IBM fired its CEO recently and brought Arvind Krishna to do a clean up job. Amongst many major moves, Krishna spun out IBM’s low-margin services business, and now has managed to sell off Watson Health for a decent sum.

Big picture — its a survival battle for the company. If the business doesn’t return to growth, a General Electric like split-up or sale may be imminent.

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Article of the Week 📖

As the US moves to 5G wireless networks, it’s being forced to ground thousands of flights because aviation systems are interfering with carrier signals — here’s a Wall Street Journal piece detailing what exactly happened.

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What else are we Snackin'🍿

📉 Bought the dip - El Salvador won’t back down. Despite BTC being burnt, the country bought another 410 bitcoins worth $15M, taking its total ownership to 1,500. 

🤙 No more gold toilet for Mallya – Swiss bank UBS has won a judgement to seize the primary home of Mr. Mallya, leaving him at the mercy of an eviction.

✋ Paisa kon dega? – more than 450 infrastructure projects run by GOI have cost more than anticipated, running an overage of over ₹4 lakh crores.

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Hit that 💚 if you liked today’s issue.

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