Lulu, is that you? 💸
Zero to unicorn, Substack hits a milestone, and Constitution for sale.
Market summary: 📊
Looking like another shaky week in the making for India, with Tuesday finishing down. US ended up, with tech being extremely volatile lately.
US:
S&P 500 - up 0.39%
Nasdaq - up 0.75%
India:
Nifty 50 - down 0.61%
Sensex - down 0.65%
Mid-week shot of espresso ☕
1️⃣ Crypto for India — Dalal street is set to get a taste of crypto. Asset manager Invesco is rolling out an ETF in India that will basically invest in foreign-funds which in turn will invest in publicly traded crypto-companies like Coinbase, Robinhood, or even MicroStrategy and Tesla. Big money managers, handling billions for their clients in India, can’t just set up a wallet and hustle coins, so funds like this could be a good way of getting some exposure. SEBI gotta say yes tho.
2️⃣ Web3 coming — the Verge says Twitter’s latest API will apparently give developers freedom to build decentralized apps on the platform. Deets are still awaited, but Jack is often seeing quoting he wants Twitter to be the “standard for the public conversation layer of the internet” and with features like NFT wallets, Bitcoin tipping already integrated, the optionality seems bright.
Lululemon of India, is that you? 💃
What happened — Go Fashion, a company that runs a women’s apparel brand Go Colors in India, will open its IPO for bidding tomorrow — trying to raise ₹1,000 crores from the public markets.
What do they do — Go basically operates in what they call the bottom-wear segment, selling everything from pants, athletic-wear, leggings, to women’s trousers — through a network of 450+ outlets, as well as platforms like Myntra.
Financials seem respectable — with revenues of ₹392 crores for the peak year before COVID, and profits of about ₹52 crores. COVID did make a dent (pulling revenues down ~30%), but that’s consistent with other offline-heavy retail brands that faced the worst of lockdowns (90%+ of Go revenues come from offline stores).
Also, Go owns about 8% of the bottom-wear market in India, in what appears to be a fast growing, extremely fragmented space. Quick link to the docs.
Bottomline — if you’re wondering a single-vertical niche play can be a thing by itself, remember how the $60 billon Lululemon got started.
0 to Unicorn in 6 months 🦄
Mensa Brands, one of the top ecommerce-rollup platforms in India, closed a $135 million Series B round from Falcon Edge, Prosus, and a few others, at a $1.2 billion valuation — becoming India’s 36th unicorn of the year! 🚀
Ya’ll probably know by now, Mensa operates a holding company that acquires and scales category leading digital-only brands on platforms like Amazon, Flipkart — pooling resources to cut costs and compound growth.
Currently, they run 12 brands, independently profitable, across beauty, apparel and home.
Bottomline — with the horrific unit economics we’re seeing with individual D2C brands, marriage with a roll-up is looking like the only reasonable exit for many.
And while we’re on DTC businesses struggling to pay bills, ☝️
Casper, the mattress-in-a-box giant that in many ways shaped the D2C revolution and gave rise to million-other clones around the world, sold to a private investor for $300 million — putting an end to a painful run.
Casper had IPO’ed at $12 a share in early 2020. Beat up for slow growth, with losses mounting, and competition rising, the stock was trading at $3.5-odd last week, before Durational Cap swooped in and saved all bag-holders lol.
Nykaa’s first earnings after its IPO got mixed reactions 🙌
Days after its kick-ass listing, Nykaa came back with some pretty decent numbers for its first quarter as a public company — but rising costs soured the mood.
Quick look at the numbers:
Revenue of ₹885 crore, for the past 3 months — up 47% YoY, thanks to re-openings nationwide and also all the press from the IPO, we guess
Profits of just ₹1.2 crore, down 95% YoY — with Marketing expenses weighing on things.
37 million monthly active shoppers, buying merchandise worth ₹1,622 crores for the quarter — a 64% Q-o-Q jump!
Beauty and personal care continue to grow a healthy 38% YoY, gaining share from decaying legacy brands, while Nykaa’s foray into apparel is kicking ass — growing much faster than the rest of the business. Stock is down ~5% since the print.
Bottomline — with every upside pretty-much priced into the mountain's high valuation, we're likely going to see stock move sideways for a long time!
Closing out — crypto-nerds are buying the US constitution 📋
Just when you thought it couldn’t get any weirder, a group of people online have joined hands, forming a DAO, to buy an original 1787 copy of the US constitution at an auction on Thursday.
Firstly, DAOs are basically a token-backed group of people, who come together by pooling money secured on the blockchain, and then decide what to do using the token issued to them to vote their opinions. Here’s a more technical walkthrough.
Anyway, so for the first time in 33 years, a rare copy of the US constitution will be auctioned at Sotheby's this week. There are only 11 surviving copies of the original edition from 1787 — and just one (the one being auctioned) is privately owned.
The bid is expected to be around $15 to $20 million, and so far the nerds have pooled $5.4 million. Here’s their website.
Big picture — DAOs have been a buzzword for long, but this is probably the most extensively marketed effort lately, sure to grab plenty of headlines. What’s next, real estate projects, sports teams, or perhaps even companies?
What else are we Snackin’ 🍿
🛫 Ready player Akasa - Rakesh Jhunjhunwala’s Akasa Airlines ordered 72 Boeing 737 MAX jets for its eventual lift off in April of next year.
👑 Who rules - Mckinsey & Co. says China has overtaken the US to become the richest country in the world with a wealth of $120 trillion, a 17x increase over the past 20 years.
🥳 Million is always special - Substack, the platform for newsletters that caused an exodus of journalists around the world, now apparently has 1 million paid subscribers.
Hit that 💚 if you liked today’s issue.
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Zero to Unicorn### soon only an idea/imagination may become a Unicorn??????!!!!!!!!!!!