Ola loading up 🔥
Forbes' SPAC, Zoom marches on, and another gold in.
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Market summary: 📊
India skyrocketed to end at new highs, in hopes that GDP growth data coming today shatters all expectations. US had a good day too, with tech particularly standing out.
US:
S&P 500 - up 0.43%
Nasdaq - up 1.12%
India:
Nifty 50 - up 1.35%
Sensex - up 1.36%
What’s brewing hot? ☕
✅ SaaS and Finance, ooh — Tally Solutions, one of India’s leading home grown enterprise resource planning software companies, has apparently applied for a Small Finance Bank license — which basically could allow the company to begin accepting deposits or lend out money. Software companies with wide distribution, sitting close to money processes, are in an extremely powerful position to monetize deeper via embedded fintech services, and given Tally's SME heavy user base in India, the combination could be lit. Btw, Tally gotta go public pls!
Ola Electric prepping for a big raise 🔥
Riding high on the successful launch of its EV bikes, Ola Electric is apparently in talks with private equity investors (including Falcon Edge Capital and Temasek) to raise over $500 million, at a $3 billion valuation.
Competition in the EV space is heating up, with Ola pitted not only against well-funded ventures like Ather Energy, but cash rich lateral entrants like Bajaj, TVS, and Hero, all while its ride-hailing biz runs dry too. Getting early to market with production capacity, distribution, service, and charging infra could very well hold the key to long term survival, and that, needs troves of green cash.
Besides, Ola’s upcoming IPO should give the ride-hailing business another $1 billion, part of which could go for the EV venture.
While we were talking about EVs,
State of Odisha brought in a plan putting serious subsidies and incentives on the plate for EV companies that are willing to kick off manufacturing in the state. Odisha also announced an agenda to electrify 20% of all present fleet by 2025, luring citizens with some tax allowances and subsidies. Timely!
Another media house goes public 👏
Forbes, the business magazine company, will be going public at a $630 million valuation, via a SPAC merger with Magnum Opus Acquisition.
Almost a household name, Forbes’ content reaches over 150M people worldwide, churning $160 million on revenues through ads, live events, print and digital subscriptions. Kinda lower than you’d expect.
Bottomline — SPAC deals are becoming popular in media. Recently Buzzfeed and Vox Media announced their own mergers too.
While we’re on Media, ☝️
German media giant Axel Springer, acquired political-news company Politico in a $1 billion deal. Axel Springer’s been on an acquisition spree lately — adjusting its empire to get exposure to brands with a modern voice, having recently purchased Business Insider and then Morning Brew in multi million dollar deals.
How much money does Google’s Play Store make? 💰
$11-$15 billion! For the year of 2019, Google made $11.2 billion apparently, earned from payment fees, 30% commissions, and developer subscriptions for millions of apps running on Android devices.
Google is usually pretty secretive about its breakdowns, but had to disclose the numbers in a court filing where Google is being sued for monopolistic practices on the Play Store.
Meanwhile, sneak peek at the iPhone 13 anyone?
Rumor has it Apple’s iPhone 13 will directly connect to a low-earth orbit satellite network and be able to make satellite calls and messaging work whenever users are not linked to the internet.
Satellite connectivity has its own limitations (poor speed, expensive gear), but if Apple does innovate around it (alongwith with Starlink and a million other companies who are trying), this could spitball into a serious blow for the long term viability of telecom carriers.
Closing out — Zoom won’t stop growing 📈
COVID or no-COVID, Zoom culture is here to stay — for the last quarter, Zoom grew its revenues by nearly 54% YoY, to bring in $1 billion in revenues.
That’s a 54% growth on top of 355% growth last year.
But a spoiled Wall Street still believes those are rookie numbers, and stock was hit 10% after the reports came out. Meanwhile, conservative analysts can’t stop fawning over the loaded profit margins.
What else are we snackin’ 🍿
🎫Got the tag - PhonePe received an insurance broking license, as wallets morph into full stack financial services platforms.
🏅Historic triumph - Shooter Avani Lekhara won a gold medal in at the Paralympics, becoming the only Indian women to win a gold at the games.
Hit that 💚 if you liked today’s issue.
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