Reliance likes it quick 🔫
Djoker detained, VR is picking up heat, and hoarders are back.
Market summary: 📊
Ouch. India pulled back a painful percent on Thursday, after 3 straight days of gains for the new year. US continued to bounce all over, finishing another down day after Wednesday’s carnage.
US:
S&P 500 - down 0.096%
Nasdaq - down 0.041%
India:
Nifty 50 - down 1.50%
Sensex - down 1.03%
What’s brewing hot? ☕
👎 No country for Novak — tennis legend Novak Djokovic was detained and is being considered for deportation from Australia, because he refuses to get vaccinated. Scheduled to play at the Aus Open, Novak arrived unvaccinated at the airport. The Aussies promptly canceled his visa, holding him at the airport for like 9 hours, while his lawyers argued in courts for a reversal. You’ve probably heard, Australia has gone all batshit crazy with their COVID-policy enforcement, drawing global criticism.
👀 Ashleel harkatein — BharatPe co-founder and Shark Tank judge Ashneer Grover is facing heat for lambasting and threatening a Kotak employee, who appears to be his personal banking guy, for —*drums pls* — not getting him an allocation in the Nykaa IPO. Audio clipping of the “dialogue” is being circulated on social. Grover’s response does very little to disprove things to anyone with a double digit IQ. Could be more than one side to the story, but those employees probably deserve more like a BMW car for working under such leadership.
Reliance with the big guns at the quick-commerce party 🔫
What’s poppin’ — RIL’s retail business led an eye popping quarter-of-a-billion dollar round into rapid delivery platform Dunzo — in exchange for a 25.8% stake.
With guys like Grofers (aka Blinkit), Zepto charging up the quick commerce field, and with Swiggy, Zomato and others willing to play ball, Reliance couldn’t afford to NOT secure itself a seat at the rapidly expanding table.
Dunzo still averages about ~19 mins per order apparently, but with thousands of delivery agents live, optimizing for shorter times won’t be hard. That RIL dolla should help.
For Reliance meanwhile, beyond Jio Mart and grocery delivery, the partnership could also compound possibilities with other categories — like delivery of apparel, electronics etc.
Big picture — quick-commerce is estimated to be a $5 billion game by 2025. We’ve started with grocery, but once consumers get comfortable, there’s no going back, and the model could quickly expand beyond grocery. It’s inevitable.
While we’re still on RIL ☝️
Mota bhai made a quick trip to New York and pulled in $4 billion of debt from institutional investors — via a bond sale that would be the LARGEST ever to date by an Indian company abroad!
Bank of America, Citibank, and HSBC orchestrated the deal. Most of the $$ will be put to pay off other smaller loans RIL has, and to accelerate its growth plans across categories — Retail, Digital, Clean Energy… you know it.
What’s poppin’ in Venture Town? 💰
Social-platform Bolo Live scooped up $2.4 million for a pre-Series A round from Orios Venture, SOSV and a few others.
Previously known as Bolo Indya, the platform lets content creators, mostly in heartland India, host chats and live-streams for their fans — with native payment functions that make tipping, subscriptions, commerce easy. Over 100K creators frequent the app, with revenues apparently topping $1 million. Not bad! 👏
Meanwhile, in food-tech 🥗
Another delivery venture, Living Foods, which sells fresh produce (fruits, veggies, and other) closed a $7.5 million Series A round from Amasia, Blume, and others.
Living Foods mostly deals in fresh food items — think seasonal fruits, bread, chocolates, specializing in delivering stuff within 24 hours of them being produced or harvested. Business currently operates mostly in BLR, and will expand to Mumbai following the raise.
Everyone wants a piece of VR 🥽
What happened — PlayStation maker Sony announced an upgraded PS-VR-2, a virtual reality headset to complement its gaming offerings.
After Oculus topped App Store rankings and managed to sell 8M+ VR units last year, Metaverse and VR hype is getting a lot of headlines rn. Sony’s product however will work solely in tandem with its PS5 setup — so no Meta like dystopian dreams of dominating an endless virtual space. Just better gaming experiences.
But competition is slowly rising — with Meta, Sony, Apple (rumored), Google (new version of the glass coming), Snapchat, as well as smartphone vendors from the yester-era like HTC, Xiaomi, the playing field is suddenly looking all crowded.
While we’re here, ☝️
After years of trying, Zuckerberg is apparently pulling the plug on building his own operating system for Meta’s AR/VR ambitions. Meta will instead just rely on a modified version of Android that it uses right now to power its Oculus line up.
Giving up OS control is disadvantageous, but for Meta probably the hardware + software assault is becoming too heavy to push simultaneously. Ask Tim Cook for help?
Closing Out — Panic buying is back 🥴
Rising cases are bringing all the closet hoarders back… with top ecommerce platforms witnessing record demand for daily necessities, amidst fears of repeat lockdowns.
Essential items in packaged foods, hygiene products, and even freaking chocolates are apparently seeing the highest jumps — with demand up 15% week-over-week on average. Here’s more stats from ET. Several companies including the likes of Parle are ramping up production to keep those shelves full.
Why care — in the short term, the forward pull in demand could be great for FMCG and other CPG stocks. Ride safe tho.
What else are we Snackin’ 🍿
👨💼 Hiring now - all the meme-noise is becoming tooo much to handle, so SEBI is accepting applications for 120 senior-level officer positions to bolster its team.
🗣️ Pay back - GOI is putting Xiaomi India on the hot seat for failure to pay pending custom dues worth $87.8 million.
📈 Inflation maxx - The world food price index jumped 28% in 2021 to 125.7 points, the highest jump in a decade! Dry wallets!
Hit that 💚 if you liked today’s issue.
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