Lazy Monday 💤

Byjus numbers, Venture deals, and a shoe IPO

Sep 06, 2021

Hi 👋, Tanvi here.

Filter Coffee hits your inbox every morning with notable tech and business news scoops to jump start your day.

Let’s go ahead and get started:

Fresh from the oven☕

✅ Caught up in junk — Infosys’ botched launch of the IT tax portal is blowing over into a PR nightmare. Political magazine Panchjanya was quick to label the company “anti-national” in an elaborate editorial tirade that thankfully nobody from the mainstream business community takes seriously. Infosys' co-founder has been doing press-rounds trying to defuse the sentiment, while GOI and other government and trade agencies have distanced themselves. Folks just need to calm for a bit!

With the US markets shut for Monday for Labor day, it’s gonna be a slow couple of news days here. Let’s run through things quickly…

BYJU’s gives a sneak peek 👀

For the year before COVID, Byju’s managed to grow its revenues by 82% YoY to well over ₹2,300 crores, as disclosed some regulatory filings, offering a rare peek behind the curtain.

The data is for before COVID, so it's a bit stale, but still has some interesting nuggets.

Quick look:

Loss of ₹262 crore or ~11% of revenues
More than 70% of the revenue came from sales of educational tablets and SD cards, wtf?
232% growth in international revenues, 60% growth in domestic

FYI, the business has been on a rampant acquisition spree, which combined with organic growth, should put revenues close to ₹4-5K crores at the least for the last 12 months. But the revenue mix and the international growth rates certainly raised some eyebrows.

Bottomline — clearly laying the groundwork and taking temperature for the looming IPO.

2 quick updates from venture town 💸

First, a Shopify for small businesses in India, Bikayi, closed a $10.8 million Series A round from Sequoia Capital.

Part of this YC batch, Bikayi basically provides a simple digital storefront to Indian merchants along with a suite of services like catalogue listing, design support, integrated shipping, and obviously simplistic data in the backend to help scale.

More than $200M in merchandise volumes have been processed on the platform, with 4 million merchants onboarded.

Moving on to a promising clean-tech raise,🔌

EV charging infra startup, Revos, raised $4 million from US-based Union Square Ventures and Prime Venture Partners.

Revos makes software needed to run and manage a network on vehicle chargers, with functionality that takes care of billings, 24x7 cloud connectivity, and other basic functions, which is sold to 2 and 3 wheeler electric car makers. 10,000 chargers have already been deployed across India, China, Vietnam, Nepal and Egypt!

Quick look at a hyped shoe IPO 👞

What happened — Allbirds, the favorite footwear-brand of Silicon Valley VC bros and tech nerds, is going public in one of the most anticipated direct-to consumer brand IPOs worldwide.

The SF-based company took a sustainable approach to making athletic sneakers that were non-flashy so they could also be worn to work, building a passionate base among valley-nerds. However, when the docs came out, folks didn’t quite seem as excited about the IPO.

Quick stats:

Made $219 million in revenues in 2020, and $196M in 2019 — growth not bad considering COVID
But losses are rising too… losing $26 million in 2020, and $14.5 million before that
Runs about ~30 offline stores, while majority sales come online

What’s hurting — Allbirds’ heavy focus on an omnichannel strategy since 2017 has gotten the firm bleeding heavily. Markets have been burnt previously with companies like Casper following a similar route, which is making folks a bit cautious.

Big picture — western D2C companies have surprisingly struggled to prove unit economics at scale, while Indian players like Nykaa are kicking ass, profitably.

What else are we snackin’ 🍿

🥇 Mission complete - India finished the Paralympics with 19 medals, with Pramod Bhagat winning the country’s first gold in badminton.

✅ Milestone check- YouTube Music crossed more than 50 million paid subscribers. Some of the base is trial, but Google’s focus on regional music is paying off. Watchout Spotify.

Hit that 💚 if you liked today’s issue.

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