More like Pain-tm 🙃

RIP Lata ji, Peloton's suitors, and the great cloud explosion.

Gm folks! 👋

Bulk of earnings are behind us. Few major names such as Airtel, Nykaa, Zomato, Apollo are due to report this week. Markets will be busy digesting trends and picking winners based on what we’ve learnt so far.

Meanwhile, RBI will be meeting from Monday through Wednesday to discuss interest rates. High rates could sap the economy of growth fuel, while low rates could set the markets running. Either way, we’re likely in for a ride this week. Let’s hit it 🤙

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Kicking off the week ☕

😔 Covid casualties — Bharat Ratna Lata Mangeshkarji passed away yesterday at the age of 92, succumbing to post-COVID complications. Lauded as ‘India’s Nightingale’, her career ran for seven decades, producing 30,000+ songs with the Guinness Book recognizing her as the most recorded artist worldwide ever. RIP.

🐵 Left exposed — Buzzfeed is taking heat for disclosing the real world identities of 2 of the founders of the famed NFT project Bored Ape Yacht Club, aka BAYC. While pseudonymous existence is popular in Web3, real world folks sometimes have sought more transparency, especially for projects with HUGE financial incentives on the table. BAYC, a collection of 10,000 apes for example has generated more than $1 billion in total sales — 2.5% of which goes to the founders in perpetuity. Buzzfeed thought otherwise, and is now being roasted.

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No end in sight for PayTM’s struggles 🥱 

What’s happening — PayTM continues to lose money by the boatloads — reporting 40% expansion in losses for the last 3 months of 2021.

However, there were more than a few bright spots in the numbers, as management pushes hard to put things in place. Revenue growth was strong, engagement is decent, and momentum is picking up in emerging businesses like lending. 

Quick look at other key stats: 

• Revenue of ₹1,456 crores, grew an impressive 88% YoY

• Total volumes of commerce on the platform rose 123% YoY to ₹2.5 lakh crores — thanks to holiday shopping

• Loans disbursed grew 366% YoY on the platform, and Average Monthly Transacting users jumped 37% YoY to 64.4 million

But with losses at ₹778 crore, or nearly 53% of total revenue, even the most courageous investors are deterred from jumping in.

Worth mentioning — major payments businesses around the world are going through a massive reset. From PayPal to Square to MercadoLibre, almost all stocks have had valuations cut into half from peaks.

Meanwhile, old school finance has it all sorted 👏 

State Bank of India grew its profits by 62% YoY to ₹8,432 crores, just like its private counterparts, to wrap up what has so far been an excellent quarter for Indian financial players.

SBI’s growth was driven by particularly strong demand for home loans as real estate slowly recovers from COVID problems.

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Peloton’s takeout is the talk of the town 🏋️‍♀️

What’s poppin’ — rumors suggest top companies playing at the intersection of media, content, and fitness, including Nike, Disney, and Amazon, are looking to buy out fitness-bike maker Peloton.

Reopening of gyms coupled with poor planning had resulted in Peloton getting hammered over the past 6 months. Management’s repeated back-paddling on strategy, and shenanigans like the founder buying a $55 million Hamptons mansion, while stock was beaten down 85%+, has totally eroded investor confidence.

Regardless, their products are awesome, well loved, and the content-led expansion they pioneered (like Cult-fit in India) is invaluable to many. Nike for example, could use the bikes as as hardware hook to extend its merch empire.

Or Amazon could integrate the services into Prime, and expand its fitness line up which includes products like the tracker Halo. 

Why care — the at-home fitness market is a fast growing subsector within the fitness tech space. Could see a few other big tech giants chasing this deal too.

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Closing Out — 2021 was a record year for Cloud 🔥 

What’s poppin’ — global cloud infrastructure market is on a tear. Early reports suggest cloud hosting added close to $50 billion in incremental revenues in 2021 — taking total spending to $178 billion for the year, up 43% YoY.

This excludes money spent on SaaS, Platforms, APIs, or other security software.

Anyway, Amazon’s AWS, Microsoft’s Azure, and Google’s Cloud Platform absolutely dominate the hosting infrastructure game. Amazon leads with a 33% market share, but Microsoft at 21% and growing much faster is quickly catching up.

Bottomline — each year, close to $4 trillion is spent on IT systems. Even in 2021, the runway remains quite long.

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What else are we Snackin’🍿

👎 Had to act - Spotify finally took down 113 episodes of Joe Rogan’s podcast, after a musician posted a video compilation on Instagram showing Joe using racial slurs in them.

💰 Big plans - Airtel will spend ₹1.17 lakh crores over the next 5 years to set up key infrastructure for its 5G network. 

💪 Good read - Microsoft reported $15 billion+ in cybersecurity revenues. Here’s a cool profile of the guy who leads the division. 

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Hit that 💚 if you liked today’s issue.

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