Omicron’s world 😷
PayTM trying hard, ITC makes moves, and Black Friday disappoints.
Happy Monday folks 👋
5 weeks to go in this year, and it looks like we already have a beast to tackle with Omicron. Renew the Zoom subscriptions, bring out the Pelotons and the Pajamas — going to be a long drag! Lets go! 🤙
Quick shot of Monday Caffeine ☕
✅ Little taste of India — GOI is publicly asking citizens to shun Elon Musk’s satellite internet business, Starlink — after Starlink began advertising its products in India without appropriate licenses. 😂 The company apparently registered an India entity on Nov. 1, dropped its papers off with the regulators, and quickly began advertising its wares online — already getting some 5,000 pre-signups from customers. Meanwhile several other competitors like Airtel’s OneWeb, and even Amazon have been politely waiting in line for a green light. Simple “kayde mein rahoge, toh fayde mein rahoge” reminder to kick things off.
Omicron, the party spoiler — how we doing? 😷
The latest variant of the virus continues to spread at alarming rates — almost all provinces of South Africa have reported infections, with new-cases now coming out of the UK, Netherlands, Germany, Israel, Italy, and at least 5 other countries.
Most patients are asymptomatic, and have already been vaccinated.
Nations are responding swiftly — Israel has banned all foreign tourists. The US blocked select 8-African nations. Europe has gone into a banning frenzy as well. India is reviewing a proposal to delay full resumption of international flights, while amping up screening at major airports. No local cases have been detected so far.
State of cure — vaccine makers are working on multiple strategies, including Omicron-specific boosters, or doubling up dosages. Moderna seems to be the one leading with reasonable success — claiming a credible vaccine ready by early 2022, thanks to its R&D which had been predicting possible variants for over a year.
Reasonable data collection itself will take 2+ weeks, and until then, we’re at the mercy of personal hygiene.
Big picture — broad COVID fear and uncertainty, rising inflation, supply chain problems, looming interest-rate changes — its all here once again. Gonna be a tricky week with the markets.
PayTM trying its best to not freeze in the cold 💥
The payments platform reported a pretty decent second quarter, which the company hopes will take some pressure off of its stock after the soft IPO open.
Quick look at the numbers:
Revenues jumped 69% YoY to ₹1,086 crores
Losses grew just 8% YoY to ₹473 crores, much slower than revenues, which is a good sign
Revenues from commerce and cloud services grew 47% YoY to ₹240 crores , showing the non-payments businesses moving slowly. Investors like that!
Reopenings of travel, movie theatres, as well as emerging products in lending, BNPL, helped the growth numbers.
What matters — even the most perfect scenario is likely priced into the mountain high valuation here, so hard to imagine any sustainable positive outcome for the stock, but solid execution like this could work the magic.
Management deserves some points! ✌️
While we’re on fintech, ☝️
Groww is swinging big — the investing-app that lets folks buy stocks and mutual funds is taking a page out of the Robinhood playbook, launching an integrated neobank, says Entrackr. With 20 million registered users, and cash-coffers running deep from recent raises, can’t see no reason to build more services that thicken existing consumer relationships. Let’s see how it plays out.
Quick look at ITC’s rare D2C bet 🤙
What Happened — ITC is acquiring a 16% stake in homegrown personal care brand called Mother Sparsh, for ₹20 crores — continually and tirelessly (😂) expanding beyond its core ciggy-empire.
Mother Sparsh, a 5-year old business, sells ayurvedic skin & hair care products (chemical free), for babies and new mothers — through an omnichannel model. Revenues topped ₹15 crores last year — so its a sizable upcoming operation.
We’re guessing they perhaps reached out to ITC for a distribution partnership, given ITC’s extensive network from malls-to-tapris in India, which probably transformed into a longer-term investment partnership. Win win. 🤙
Closing out — more like weak-Friday, amiriteeee 📉
Early stats from Black-Friday sales aren’t too exciting — retail consultants say traffic at stores was down more than 28% relative to pre-pandemic 2019 levels, as folks sitting at home with the Amazon app spread out their purchases through the year.
Online shopping was soft too — with just $8.9 billion spent in the US this year on Black Friday, vs. $9 billion a year ago. Literally no growth!
Now how much of that is because of the dilutive effect that 24x7 ecommerce sales have had on such events, or because of an inflation burnt consumer, is yet unknown.
Bottomline — any signs of softening consumer spending going into the holidays could be heavily penalized by Wall Street at open.
What else are we Snackin’ 🍿
🛢️ Unruly swings - Oil price crashed 13.6% to end at $68.15 per barrel — the lowest level in more than 2 months due to Omicron.
🤞 Dara pats Zomato - “we’re happy with how the Zomato model has grown, it has been a great bet” says the CEO of Uber. Uber had sold its food delivery biz to $ZOMATO in exchange for a 9.99% stake.
Hit that 💚 if you liked today’s issue.
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