Power cuts incoming 🔌
Squid Games winning, 29th unicorn, and Crypto bacc.
Market summary: 📊
India resumed its upward journey for another day. US had a positive day too, but tech bounced all over the place.
US:
S&P 500 - up 1.05%
Nasdaq - up 1.40%
India:
Nifty 50 - up 0.74%
Sensex - up 0.75%
What’s brewing hot? ☕
✅ Oyo got Zo problems — after dragging Oyo to the court over a botched acquisition deal, Zostel is now planning on asking SEBI to halt Oyo’s IPO — for failure of “disclosing” the company as a part Oyo owner in the official documents submitted. For those unaware, Zo Rooms and Oyo had an acquisition deal which Oyo says went stale, but Zo claims still holds. Good luck both!
✅ India’s own power problems — like China, a coal crunch is threatening to paralyze India’s power systems too. Most coal-fired power stations are running on record low coal stockpiles — with on average ~4 days worth of coal left, the lowest it has been in 10+ years. Rising electricity demand, thanks to rapid industrial recovery post COVID, along with a slump in coal mining is causing the problems. Power cuts could get frequent, while some regions may be asked to pay more.
Global Foundries is going public, finally! 💪
The 3rd largest global semiconductor contract manufacturer, Global Foundries, is planning an IPO— hoping to leverage the ongoing semi shortage as a good excuse to raise and invest big money.
Global Foundries is basically in the business of making custom chips for other companies — leading a growing trend of contract manufacturing, where semi companies (think Apple, Nvidia, Qualcomm) have stopped investing in their own machinery, just to focus on perfecting their design, and then outsource production.
Quick look at the GF’s financials:
~$6 billion in revenue last year, growing ~10% as chip shortages raise prices,
Losses stand at $300 million,
Counts AMD, Broadcom, Apple, and other biggies among customers
Global was actually in close talks with Intel for a $30 billion acquisition — a deal meant to consolidate more semi-manufacturing assets under the control of the western world, as a counter to China’s rising dominance.
But the talks fell cold, and hence the move to go public.
What’s popping in Venture Town 💸
Food-tech is back with a bang! Licious, a grocery delivery company focusing on meat and seafood, closed a $52 million Series G round from IIFL and Avendus, doubling valuation to a billion dollars.
That’d be the 29th unicorn of 2021! 🦄
In addition to meat, Licious also sells an extensive lineup of self-branded food products — from frozen foods to dips, along with recipes and read-to-eat kits. The business runs in 14 cities, serving 2 million users, while processing a million orders a month — with GMV growing 500% over the past year.
Then a quick mobility raise, ☝️
Chalo, a public-transportation venture, raised $40 million in a Series C round from Lightrock India, Filter Capital (not us lol) and a few angel investors.
Chalo offers civic bus operators an application to digitize ops such as ticketing, live fleet tracking, payments, and monthly pass sales, running across 7 cities, servicing 20 million end customers every month.
Netflix shows who is boss 🦑
What happened — Netflix’s newly released show, Squid Games, is absolutely killing it — igniting a global culture sensation.
The Korean dark-thriller’s plot basically revolves around 400 financially broke people playing children’s games, competing for a mega prize. There’s a minor tweak though — losing gets you killed.
Anyway, the 9-episode show is on its way to become Netflix’s BIGGEST show ever, with 80 million+ viewings around the world by the end of this month, with top of the charts rankings in 90 countries. Games from the show are being converted into TikTok/Reels challenges, while apps themed around it are being launched on app stores and Roblox!
Fun fact — the creator of the show had written the script in 2010, but nobody would make it, until a streaming-wars driven Netflix agreed to take a bet.
Why care — from Formula 1, to Money Heist, to now Squid Games, with the $17B+ annual spend on original content — Netflix has repeatedly shown its clout in igniting culture phenomena. Do you even remember what Hulu streams!
Closing out — the Old and the New, both buzzing 💰
In old-economy — Moody’s changed India's credit rating from negative to a “stable” — acknowledging progress in containing risks to our financial system from COVID.
In the simplest terms, credit ratings are like the nations credit score, that offer institutional investors confidence to deploy money into the country, buy government bonds and such.
Then in the new finance-world, 📈
Bloomberg Quint says India saw a 600%+ growth in crypto assets purchases during the last 12 months — making it one of the fastest growing crypto regions in the world during the time.
What’s even more surprising is that large, institutional sized transfers into crypto of over $10M grew by 42% YoY — the highest among comparable regions, all despite government’s cold stance. Quite reassuring!
What else are we snackin’ 🍿
🗣️ Pay up — Tesla will pay more than $130 million to a former worker for failure to offer protection from racial abuse.
📶 5G FTW — Airtel conducted India’s first 5G trial in a village on the outskirts of Delhi, using Ericsson gear. 5G wars officially on?
Hit that 💚 if you liked today’s issue.
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