Red Twitter š¦
Adobeās acquisition, social commerce, and HDFC wants more.
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Market summary: šĀ
Phenomenal week so far in India, as outlook brightens up going into a holiday season thatās expected to see record consumer spending. US markets made a decent comeback too, with tech particularly showing strength.
US:
S&P 500 - up 0.77%
Nasdaq 100 - up 2.31%
India:
Nifty 50 - up 0.93%
Sensex - up 0.73%
Wonāt let startups have it easy š§
Smelling an attractive opportunity to digitize Indiaās SMEs, HDFC Bank has announced a revamped product suite called the SmartHub Merchant Solutions 3.0, bundling digital payments, banking, and other associated services for solopreneurs and merchants.
Using a mix of digital, bank branch, and offline POS strategy, the company will make it easy for small businesses to open a current account instantly and begin accepting payments in-store, online, and on-the-go. Other ideas around cutting red-tape and smoothening operations have been proposed as well, including multi-modal payment acceptance, custom lending products, product catalogues over Whatsapp, Khata-apps etc.
The bank has set an ambitious goal of reaching out to 20 million SMEs over the next 3 years, including professional services like doctors, pharmacies, salons and laundry services across metro, semi urban and rural India.
Whatās cookingābasically, the old-schoolers are starting to smell the alluring ādigitization of offline commerceā opportunity and are out to get a piece of the pie for themselves. And honestly, one could argue that the odds of their success look quite favorable, given their cash rich operating position and nationwide scale to launch to a wide existing user base.
But butā¦. if weāre starting with the basicsāfirst of all, what kinda name is āSmartHub Merchant Solutions 3.0ā?. Couldāve come up with something that belongs in this century. Then, old banks are known to deal in BS like this, which tells us not to hold hopes too high. š
Who gots the cash? š°
Social commerce venture Citymall bagged $3 million from Elevation Capital, with Waterbridge and LetsVenture pitching in for a small piece.
Like countless other companies weāve tracked so far, Citymall essentially allows small merchants to build a digital store online and leverage their network on social platforms to spread the word and drive business, while handling back office operations, distribution, fulfillment for these merchants. In the past six months though, the company has apparently seen a 12x growth in revenue, helped by deep presence in smaller towns and cities like Rewari, Dharuhera, Pataudi, Sonipat, Bahadurgarh etc.
The opportunity is obviously a green field with millions of merchants scrambling to digitize right now in India and we've increasingly noticed similar concepts getting funded lately. Fresh funds will help build a supply chain across the Tier III and IV cities in India, and build a core team.Ā
When creativity, technology and education meet,Ā
FrontRow, a learning and community platform that helps users learn creative arts and sports from accomplished personalities has raised a $3.2 million seed round from Lightspeed, Elevation, and Deepika Padukoneās family office.Ā
In a regional take on Masterclass, the platform essentially connects learners with successful teachers, around a community. The company already boasts tens of thousands of beta users in the community at pre-launch.
Anyway, capital from the fundraise will fuel expansion, add more courses and categories, and help expand the community offering.Ā
Lastly, an old-school venture bet,
Oil and gas giant Shell is making an unusual bet on Indian ventures, looking to fund nearly 25-30 companies a year until 2022. The company plans on writing about $20K checks to individual startups, specifically in sectors that could have relevance for Shell, such as IOT, logistics, transportation etc. and plug them into Shellās global resources to accelerate growth. Sounds promising! š
Adobe opens its wallet š
Design and productivity giant Adobe will acquire Workfront, a leading work management platform for marketers, for a whopping $1.5 billion. Workfront sells a bunch of software tools to help marketers manage their projects and workflows, such as setting agendas to create content, plan and track marketing campaigns, and execute complex workflows across teams.
For Adobe, the acquisition could sit in as a nice addition to their existing densely packed portfolio of design and marketing ācreationā tools, further making the Adobe cloud experience sticky.Ā
Besides, Workfront has an attractive book of nearly 3,000+ customers including Home Depot, T-Mobile, Deloitte, etc. all of which could be a nice market for Adobe to incrementally sell its products if they donāt already.
Takeaway: Cloud has boomed during COVID. Now as the dust settles, analysts are expecting market consolidation, with big players buying out whoever seems credible but hasnāt caught enough wind in their sails. Such small āfeature upgradeā acquisitions could help a big deal for theĀ leading cloud players who are fighting out to maintain and grow share.Ā
Building a red Twitter š¦
When leaders like Modiji, or Donald Trump took to twitter to directly communicate with their base in 2014-15, they gave these platforms new meaning. Suddenly world politicians were all acting cool, tweeting away jokes and directly talking to and forming a connection with citizens by avoiding mainstream media contact.
Brands jumped on the train as well, using the channels to build a distinct voice. Twitter found a renewed purpose, where like-minded cohorts would hang out in tight groups, and engagement within these groups shot through the roof.
With that, came bad actors as well and then came censoring. Twitter staff over the years became extremely vigilant in labeling bad actions, case in point -- blocking Trumpās tweets or slapping them with misinformation labels. Anyway, the debate of who gets to police and who becomes the bad guy quickly turned ugly, and the right-wing āconservativesā began crying bias, accusing the platforms of mistreatment.
Now claiming that social media platforms are choking their voices and hurting free speech, the conservatives have started their own damn Twitter!!Ā
Called Parler, the app is apparently a red twitter clone (we havenāt tried it though), already endorsed by top political figures from the other side of the aisle. And in no time it has amassed nearly 4 million downloads in the US.
Nobody knows what to do about this or how this game will end. But could this be a pivotal moment in social media and consumer technology where people of disparate ideologies abandon common platforms in favor of like minded echo chambers?
Donāt be surprised if an Indian Parler comes out over the next few weeks!
What else are we snackinā šæ
š Some hope - The phase 3 trials of vaccine candidate Covaxin have begun. The drug is being developed by pharmaceutical firm Bharat Biotech in collaboration with the Indian Council of Medical Research.
š¼ Jio reaches ladakh - In a bid to expand its reach to the remotest of areas, Jio has launched mobile services in Zanskar area in Ladakh. The company has installed four mobile towers in Pibiting, Padum, Akshow and Abran in Zanskar, in Kargil district of the union territory to connect the isolated area with the rest of the world with a high-speed 4G network
āļø Making travelling safe - Google will add more COVID related health and safety information to its travel booking service. The company is working with various hotel chains, vacation rental places etc. to source this health and safety data, as consumer travel demand slowly picks up.Ā
š£ Arnab on the loose - The Supreme Court on Wednesday granted interim bail to Republic TV anchor Arnab Goswami in the 2018 abetment of suicide case of an interior designer. The apex court bench headed by Justice Chandrachud said that it would be travesty of justice if bail was not granted while the FIR was still pending.
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