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Market summary: 📊
Good start to the week in India as investors eye 45K levels for Sensex. Vaccine news helped non-tech US companies gain some ground on Monday.
US:
S&P 500 - up 0.56%
Nasdaq 100 - down 0.042%
India:
Nifty 50 - up 0.52%
Sensex - up 0.44%
Jr vs. Sr—the soap opera nobody asked for 🤯
Startup twitter needs no refresher—but the $2.7 million defamation suit slapped on a YouTuber by the CEO of WhiteHatJr is quickly turning into an ugly debate about where to draw the line on false claims, legal rebuttals and citizen activism.
It all started when the defendant adopted the moniker of WhiteHat Sr, criticizing the edtech for its marketing campaigns targeted at vulnerable kids via a video on YouTube. Shit hit the fan when in a Twitter thread, the defendant went on to leak internal chats of WhiteHatJr’s employees.
Weeks after came the defamation suit, coupled with allegations of trademark infringement and charges of hacking, demanding $2.6 million in damages. Junior’s lawsuit claims elaborate efforts by the defendant to derail the company’s operations—like for example, mentoring a minor to ask questions during an event, and recording sessions of WhiteHatJr’s classes unbeknownst to the teachers.
Then there is another $1.9 million lawsuit filed against angel investor Aniruddha Malpani for criticising the company for its marketing campaigns on LinkedIn. Jr claims their revenue was hit specifically because of the post.
Anyway, for now the Delhi High Court granted an ad-interim injunction siding with WhitHatJr and its CEO, asking the defendant to refrain from using the WhiteHatSr tag and to stop commenting on the company’s employees or practices in any fashion, until the next hearing scheduled for 6th Jan 2021.
What matters: resourceful men going after vocal critics isn’t something new in India. But startups, beacons of hope around here, using courts to settle claims and thwart consumer dissent is off-putting and in bad spirit. No marketing campaign should be fragile enough to be derailed by a couple creators who only mirror the consumers’ responses.
Anyway, trust the courts to see through the noise, but this is a lesson that despite all the innovation we have seen in India so far, we’re far from realizing the free market dream we envision, where markets handle bad behavior, corporate or individual.
Modern world, modern skills 💰
Lancify, a platform that upskills young people with modern SaaS tools, scooped up a sweet $300K angel round from executives at Shopify, Freshworks and other notable angels.
We have plenty of SaaS tools and too few people capable of using them properly, and Lancify plays into this dearth of talent and teaches students software (for example Webflow) to float a freelance career. So far courses span digital marketing, design, analytics and more. The company was part of Techstars BLR and will use the funds to add more courses while driving growth initiatives.
Turning heads to an AI bid real quick,
SignalX, a risk management and compliance AI tools startup, bagged ₹6 crores from 9Unicorns, and a couple other seed stage investors including Hyderabad Angels.
The company provides an AI-powered corporate risk and due diligence SaaS platform that churns through financials and other public datasets to build a thorough outlook of the operational, legal, regulatory, bankruptcy, and reputational risk of a venture, guiding corporate risk management professionals with a data-driven approach. The company is still in its early stages and hopes the fresh raise will help catch wind.
Digital platforms marrying old school distribution 🤝
Airtel’s direct-to-home TV arm has partnered with Vedantu to broadcast live online learning sessions from Vedantu’s masterclass offering to Airtel TV viewers, in a unique partnership that seeks to marry the digital ideals of venture backed company, with the deep consumer reach of old-school television.
The interactive learning sessions will be limited to class 6-12 grade students, with a focus on science and math relevant to JEE and other entrance exams, and will be available for a fractional cost of ₹4 a day.
To suit the audience, teachers will adopt a mix of English and Hindi as the medium of teaching. 11 hours of daily content will be broadcasted, with repeats running the rest of the time. The arrangement is expected to allow nearly 17 million of Airtel’s Digital TV customers to access quality education instantly, many of whom are located in rural regions.
Bottomline: truly heartening to see the best of both worlds come together, and such an arrangement is ideal in India given the continued popularity of traditional TV in our living rooms, particularly in remote areas.
For Airtel especially, this is phenomenal because they get incremental revenue on their existing distribution, without doing much heavy lifting which can drive other growth initiatives. While for startups like Vedantu that find it hard to compete amidst the noise on digital platforms, old school channels are attractive means to enter and dominate. Win win.
Google betting on vernacular🖥️
Few months ago, Sharechat, the vernacular social giant, shared that it was looking to raise some $200 million, with close discussions being held with large tech companies including Microsoft, Google and even Snapchat. Turns out, Google liked what it saw so much, that instead of buying a small piece, the company wants to acquire the whole of Sharechat for a whopping $1 billion!
So far little details are known, but if true, the valuation will be a considerable bump from the $650 million levels the company was valued at barely 2 months ago.
The pandemic completely altered their trajectory, driving 166% growth in monthly active users in 2020, stretching the total user base to over 160 million. The company also launched a short video app recently which, in the wake of TikTok’s ban, has been a huge hit with its rural base.
Bottomline: news seems half-baked right now, but if Google does pull the trigger, this could mark a solid vote of confidence for the local ecosystem and more importantly for the regional-first startup landscape that’s building for rural and non-english first audiences.
What else are we snackin’ 🍿
💳 Sandboxes take over - Visa has partnered with ICICI bank for its Visa-in-a-box fintech acceleration programme. Through this partnership, nascent companies will be able to access the APIs and developer sandbox initiative of Visa and ICICI Bank to rapidly build, test and deploy consumer payment applications.
🏍️ India handover - Harley will work with its India partner Hero Moto Corp to make sure that its customers get a smooth transition in India, as the US motorcycle giant plans on exiting India on dismal performance. Hero MotoCorp will sell and service Harley-Davidson motorcycles going forward.
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