Market summary: 📊
Indian markets got smacked in the face, closing out the worst day of the new year. US was bouncing all over, finally finishing in the green at the end of the day.
US:
S&P 500 - up 0.28%
Nasdaq - up 0.49%
India:
Nifty 50 - down 2.66%
Sensex - down 2.62%
What’s brewing hot? ☕
😐 Blood on the street — with an 85%+ price crash in Peloton’s stock, shit is starting to get serious. Activist investor Blackwells Capital, who has ~5% stake in the business, is recommending firing the CEO and the C-Suite and putting up the business for sale. Blackwell will need a lot more support to pull it off, but moves like this are going to come for more tech names worldwide as fire sale in the markets extends.
🔫 War brewing — Putin is ready to wreck the markets even more. Russia’s plans of attacking Ukraine and taking over its capital city of Kyiv are looking more and more realistic. Western world is all roiled up. NATO forces are preparing reaction plans. US has put 8,500+ troops on high alert to block the Russians if needed. Needless to say, a war could be catastrophic to global economic recovery, putting energy supply at risk, altering political priorities, and obviously even threatening nuclear doom.
Ain’t no stopping the banking train 💰
Markets are becoming all angsty but Indian private banks are mopping the floor with bears, blasting record growth rates — thanks to the festive season, and broad economic recovery in the last 3 months.
First, ICICI grew its profits by a strong 25% YoY to more than ₹6.2K crores. Interest income was up 23%, while retail lending grew 19%. Asset quality improved (bad loans are at 0.85% of the loan book, the bank’s best since 2012). Even the digital business is booming — with transaction volume jumping 50% YoY! Move along fintech.
Then Axis bank followed — with 224% YoY growth in net profits to ₹3.6K crores (a bit skewed due to Axis’ problems last year). Axis reported similar momentum in new loans sold, and volumes.
Lastly, Yes Bank followed, turning a surprise profit for the quarter when all analysts were eyeing for losses. All of that stellar performance however was overshadowed by the ongoing carnage, so that’s that!
Bottomline — as investors gasp for a breath, improving fundamentals offer some confidence.
Swiggy is the king of food-delivery 💸
Swiggy managed to slip in a timely raise — pulling in $700 million for its Series K round (gonna run out of letters soon), from Invesco, Baron Capital and a couple of others, doubling valuation to $10.7 billion.
That trumps the value of Zomato ($9.5 billion) at yesterday’s close — officially flipping the food delivery wars in favor of team orange. How reasonable private market valuations are, that’s a discussion for another day!
Anyway, while food-delivery continues to grow at reasonable rates, it’s Swiggy’s grocery-delivery, Instamart, that’s getting investors all excited — reporting 2 million+ users, on its path to top $1 billion in volumes this year.
Bottomline — will be interesting how that valuation figure holds up in the forum of public markets though, whenever that day comes.
Meanwhile, Ola got another boost as well
Late stage investors like Tekne Private Ventures, Edelweiss, and a few others pumped another $200 million into Ola Electric, at a $5 billion valuation.
That’s a nice jump from the $3 billion Ola had raised at in September. However, we’ve constantly read reports of production issues and delivery delays in the pipeline — which investors continue to overlook.
Quick look at the Good Glamm acquisition machine 🔥
What’s poppin’ — Good Glamm Group, which is building a content led ecommerce empire, made it’s 7th acquisition over the past year, buying a personal care and beauty brand, Organic Harvest.
Organic Harvest makes toxin free skin, hair and body products made from plant based materials — a standard pitch we’ve seen with multiple products lately, sold online and through a network of 25K+ retail stores nationwide. Last year the business made about ₹75 crores in revenue.
Good Glamm will pump ~₹100 crores into the company, valuing Organic Harvest at about ₹280 crores.
Worth mentioning — Good Glamm has been employing this unique content-led approach quite successfully — owning content platforms like POPxo, ScoopWhoop, BabyChakra and even Miss Malini, which it leverages to push D2C products like MyGlamm, Moms Co., and others.
What else are we Snackin' 🍿
✈️ Delivered soon - GOI will hand over Air India to the Tatas on Jan 27th, wrapping up the airliner’s divestment process.
💵 Long way to go - EY says India needs to spend $23 billion+ by 2025 on improving its digital infrastructure (data centers, carriers, storage, cabling) to sustain and serve the explosive growth in end digital services.
🔥 Show is on - Robinhood has started rolling out its crypto wallet to the first 1,000 users on its waitlist. Very nice timing pal.
Hit that 💚 if you liked today’s issue.
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