Market summary: 📊
All priced in! Despite looming economic chaos, Indian investors woke up to take the markets a bit higher. US had a mixed day though, with tech stocks favored.
US:
S&P 500 - down 0.24%
Nasdaq - up 0.34%
India:
Nifty 50 - up 0.81%
Sensex - up 0.70%
What’s brewing hot ☕
🥳 Getting out of rough waters — India’s GDP grew another 5.3% for the October to December 2021 quarter. Growth was slightly below what GOI had guided for, but that’s mostly due to lingering effects of Omicron and other macro problems (inflation, supply woes, and such). For the full financial year that ends this March, eyes are set for an 8.9-9.2% GDP growth rate overall.
👩💼 SEBI gets a lady boss — Madabhi Puri Buch, and IIM-A and St. Stephen’s alumna will take over as the first female boss at SEBI, as GOI deviates from its practice of typically hiring men and public servants for the job. As a whole time member of SEBI’s board, Madabhi had handled several high-profile market manipulation and regulation cases, including the Zee insider trading scandal, and is apparently keen on beefing up SEBI’s data capabilities to stay ahead on financial crimes.
Economic Armageddon hits Russia 📉
Total shitshow: as the global markets opened one by one on Monday, the crippling sanctions went into full effect, ensuing total chaos for Russian banks, the Oligarchs, and their money managers worldwide.
Russia further shocked the system by changing its fiscal policies, and by closing its stock markets. Adding more fuel to the fire, large global businesses, one after the other, started running away from arrangements they had going on with Russia’s business world!
Some major happenings worth calling out: ☝️
Ruble goes kaput: after being cut off from the interbanking payment network, Russia’s Ruble, came crashing down more than 30% on the dollar.
To avoid hyperinflation, the central bank more than doubled interest rates overnight to 20%+ — a total death spell on small business and average people.
Turns out much of the foreign reserves Putin had collected ($630 billion+) to massage the impact of sanctions is apparently held in banks in New York, Tokyo, Zurich — which is becoming easy for Biden to play craps with 🎲
The worst moral blow came when Switzerland, an otherwise vocally neutral nation, joined forces with the allies, freezing Russian money held in Swiss banks and scaring Russian money-pants for their life savings
BP exits Russian oil: British Petroleum says it will offload its 19.75% stake (worth $14 billion) in Russia’s largest oil company, Rosneft — overnight ending a 3-decade old partnership. Shell and a bunch of other companies joined the roster too.
Norway’s oil fund, one of the largest sovereign wealth funds worldwide, is dumping all its Russia investments (worth about $3 billion).
Public pissed too: with cash drying up, people fled to ATMs causing a demonetization-like scenario across major Russian urban areas. Apple and Google Pay cut off payment networks in the region too, causing major delays affecting shopping to public transportation.
Meanwhile, with flights in and out of Europe closed, hundreds of thousands of Russians now find themselves stranded in foreign countries — with no way back, and no cash to spend.
Lastly, after talks at the Belarus border with Russian envoys failed, Ukraine signed a document to apply to enter the European Union formally — which could seriously escalate the conflict to a whole new dimension.
While this goes, public suffering continues unabated. Axios says 500K people have been displaced. Unofficial stats claim 200+ Ukrainian civilian casualties.
Bottomline — there is no precedent for what’s happening here! If anything is certain, its that Russia will take years to financially recover from this.
Party continues in India’s Venture Town 💰
What happened — credit card startup OneScore is in talks with big-money-bags Temasek to raise over $100 million, doubling valuation to $1.5 billion, barely a month after closing a $75 million Series C round!
OneScore is building the Credit Karma of India, a top-of-the-funnel service that gives people a way to get their credit score for free, and then uses that engagement and data to pitch them suitable financial products (credit cards, loans, etc.).
OneScore has also launched its own credit-card in the process, scaling it to 250K+ users, processing $60 million in monthly transaction volumes.
Then making a stop in fashion-lane 👕
DaMENSCH, a BLR-based men’s clothing brand, raised a $16.4 million Series B from A91 Partners, Saama Capital and others.
DaMENSCH runs a D2C service selling inner wear and casual clothing for men. The brand is widely available across top ecommerce platforms, and does about ~₹100 crores in revenues a year, with 10 million+ orders processed. New money will go to strengthen tech and expand product catalog.
Quick look at a gaming acquisition 🎮
What happened — Mobile Premier League, the home-grown fantasy gaming giant, acquired a Germany based gaming studio called GameDuell — sinking its teeth deeper in the casual mobile gaming market.
GameDuell makes casual, free-to-play games like Solitaire, Rummy for the European market mostly — owning a portfolio of 40+ games in 7 languages, reaching 130 million users. Several of its games can be played socially, betting prize money.
Anyway, MPL plans on plugging GameDuell’s production and game-design capabilities with its own distribution to complement its sports-heavy portfolio, and gain more share in Indian regional markets as well globally.
Big picture — gaming often gets ignored, but over $90 billion was spent on mobile games worldwide last year. In India, the market is expected to top $5 billion by 2025. Plenty of low hanging fruit for giants like MPL.
What else are we Snackin’ 🍿
🤑 Start em young – the people behind blockchain programming event, HackSummit, have raised a $200 million fund under HackVC to back early stage crypto startups.
🤙 Quick win for India - India’s wheat business is expected to win from the currently ongoing Ukrainian mess, with almost 7 million tons of incremental demand now coming on the table.
👊 Watchout YouTube - TikTok is adding 10 minute videos to its platform, trying to steal YouTube’s bread as YT doubles down heavily on Shorts.
Hit that 💚 if you liked today’s issue.
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