Mixed reality or magic 🤔
Gaming snapshot, venture deals, and saving journalism.
Hi 👋, Tanvi here.
Filter Coffee hits your inbox every morning with notable tech and business news scoops to jump start your day.
Sign up below for free. 👇
Let’s go ahead and get started:
Market summary: 📊
This week is turning out to be a dud with Indian markets again taking a turn in the opposite direction on Thursday. US markets lost ground as well, almost giving away all weekly gains.
US:
S&P 500 - down 0.84%
Nasdaq 100 - down 1.48%
India:
Nifty 50 - down 0.76%
Sensex - down 0.82%
Snapshot of a good gaming month 🎮
Globally, it appears the video gaming industry continues to outperform, thanks to hundreds of millions of locked down consumers looking beyond just Netflix and chill to pass time. Second quarter business performance from Activision, EA Games, Take Two, Sony, Microsoft, Nintendo etc. had all blown past expectations. Now fresh data points released most recently further validate continued strength in the market.
For the month of August 2020, US video gaming sales grew 37% against the same time last year, bringing in $3.3 billion in sales for the month. After a solid start in March, June and July sales had begun to cool off a bit, but with the pandemic only extending now growth seems to have picked up again. Year-to-date, gaming sales are at $29.4 billion, up 23% relative to 2019.
Why should we care: real-time gaming data for India is usually hard to uncover so quickly but this momentum reads very positively for the Indian gaming space as well—a market estimated to top $1.1 billion by 2021. When you combine avid gamers and the casual players who every once in a while open candy-crush, India is expected to have some 650 million gamers by the end of next year. It's a great time to be building in this space.
While we’re on this subject,
Sony’s most awaited Playstation 5 console will be out November 12, at a price point of about $500. Well, India has more PC gamers than console fans, but the entire Gaming space is at a pivotal shift with key tech like AR/VR looming on the horizon, and Sony and Microsoft’s (Xbox) competitive moves will be closely watched. Industry estimates are set for 11 million of PS unit sales, while Sony believes it can do over 15 million.
Augmented reality journalism, cool… 😎
Facebook showed a vibrant glimpse into its plans for an AR/VR future at its seventh Facebook Connect event (formerly known as Oculus connect). The company announced a bunch of products and features.
Few highlights that stood out to us —
Launched Oculus Quest 2 for cheaper price
Quest will get apps like Messenger, fitness apps, virtual workspace apps etc. to make a push outside of gaming
Discontinued Oculus Rift (FB wrapping up all VR devices into 1 product here on out)
Smart glasses announced with Ray Ban
True AR glasses are in the works with dedicated R&D team
Here’s a much much thorough coverage from Verge on the subject. 👏
Moving on,
An interesting development to come out of the stable was FB’s tie up with news publisher New York Times, in a push to tech-enable the news company and help users “visualize” news in context. For example, if NYT reporters for example are doing coverage on pollution, then filters and visualization in the background will help you imagine ground reality with much more effect. Definitely sounds very promising on paper.
It appears that FB is killing two birds in one stone — it's making sure unlike last time, traditional news companies are not left behind with emerging technologies this time. And secondly, it gets credible partners pushing its product features out to millions at once. Read more.
Bottomline: looking past journalism, visual effects and AR could quickly be the next “must-have” in digital marketing and social media, and if you’re an emerging creator this is your time to build skills and get ahead of the curve. Once these concepts go mainstream, small businesses, startups, brands everyone will jump on the train.
One last thing….
Facebook demoed an infinite workspace — a virtual office that looks straight out of Sci-Fi movies. Imagine sitting at your WFH set up and feeling like you’re in an actual office ALL the time. The videos out here are… surreal. Long way to go still but the world is surely changing to a whole new routine much faster than we are processing. 🔥
No performance, no pay 👀
That’s exactly what Vanguard, one of the largest mutual fund managers in the world, which is also one of the largest shareholders of Google told the CEO and management of Google in the last shareholder meeting. Pichai’s $277 million stock reward haul from 2019 is particularly being questioned.
How did we get here: while Amazon, Microsoft and Apple have solidified their position in the Trillion dollar market cap clubs, Google has been flip-flopping at the border (although $1T+ right now). Since Sundar took charge, Google stock has returned 121% in 5 years, while the Nasdaq 100 has risen 165%.
Regardless of the other big tech companies’ performance, there was a mild sentiment already brewing on Wall Street that Google could do more with its businesses anyway. Google has been sowing these seeds for decades into moonshot projects including — autonomy, healthcare AI, financial services, global internet access, etc. etc. but little has been taken to monetary fruition.
The company is still dependent on advertising for the majority of its revenue and thanks to a COVID-induced slump, reported its first negative growth quarter this year in July 2020. Does that warrant a change of guard? Read more.
Bottomline: well, Vanguard’s moves could give other investors some courage, and this could turn into a full blown coup in no time. But that’s the worst case scenario and is very very unlikely, considering Pichai’s flawless reputation. However, pressure is sure to keep mounting and management is on the clock to show some rage.
What happened to won’t invest in India? 🙄
Chinese gaming and social media giant, Tencent, has invested $62.8 million in Flipkart through the Indian e-commerce giant’s Singapore-based parent entity Flipkart Pte. This investment is believed to be a part of Flipkart’s $1.2 billion round that was led by Walmart in July this year, at a $25 billion valuation.
We mentioned yesterday that Walmart is preparing to take Flipkart public and the raise will help with those efforts, in addition to buttoning up operations in the background for peaking investors. Latest numbers put Walmart’s total ownership in Flipkart at about 80%. Also, Tencent, an existing investor, owns stock somewhere north of a billion dollars.
Tencent’s optimism is mildly amusing here as it continues to deploy capital in India, in what appears to be an increasingly unfriendly environment to Chinese capital in light of the ongoing geopolitical tensions between India and China at its peak. Just last month had Tencent’s peer Alibaba said it won’t invest in Indian startups for 6 months.
Capital talks 💰
COVID has given a strong boost to India’s health-tech ecosystem, there’s little doubt about that. Riding this wave, Bengaluru based, Dozee, which has built a super innovative device for contactless vitals monitoring has raised ₹12.5 crore from Prime Venture Partners, YourNest Venture Capital and 3one4 Capital.
Using medical grade contact less sensors, the device monitors vitals while asleep, complementing medical exams with valuable data and insights. So far, Dozee is already being used by over 30 healthcare institutes, with 5000 active devices in the market. New funds will be used to expand the user base to 100,000+ and set the stage for wider expansion. Sounds promising.
Moving onto ed-tech real quick, 📚
Newton School, a pay-after placement technical upskilling platform, scooped up $650,000 in a seed round funded by Nexus Venture Partners. Biggie angels such as Unacademy founders Gaurav Munjal, Roman Saini, and Hemesh Singh and other who’s-who pitched in as well.
With schools frozen and record unemployment, Newton’s business is booming. The platform aims to have 10,000 students placed by 2021 and will add more skills over the next few years.
FB’s SMB promise, 🤝
Facebook has announced a $4.3 million grant to help digitize India’s SMB sector. Benefits will be deployed in terms of advertising credits as well as cash infusion in select cases. Some 3,000 businesses in key metro regions will be supported. The move is part of the $100 million FB had committed earlier this year to revitalize small businesses around the world. Read on.
Tweet of the day -
What else are we snackin’ 🍿
🧐 Digital warfare - the government has identified some 2,500 social media accounts for spreading Chinese propaganda and misinformation on the Sino-Indian faceoff in Ladakh. These accounts are active on Facebook, YouTube and Twitter and the traces are found in Hong Kong, Pakistan, UK, Russia and China.
🙌 AMZN boosts women workers - the company has set up an all-women delivery station in Kadi, Gujarat, in an attempt to encourage women participation in the workforce. Several disruptors in the digital commerce space have carved out similar roles for women delivery partners and these initiatives deserve appreciation!
😷 Battle continues - After a spike of 97,894 new cases and 1,132 deaths in the last 24 hours, India’s COVID-19 tally has crossed the 51 lakh mark. The total cases in the country now stand at 51,18,254 with 10,09,976 active cases and 83,198 deaths.
🖥️ Still figuring out its way - Gmeet has added a new feature which will allow users to see upto 49 people at the same time in the tiled layout. A slew of other features are now available to all GSuite customers as well. Meanwhile, in other news, Zoom probably made a billion more.
Hey👋 , you think any of your friends would enjoy Filter Coffee like you? Connect us!
You can just forward this email or share FC on social media by clicking the button below. Thanks and Ciao! 😀