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Market summary: 📊
Good day in India with Sensex making up some of the losses from the day before. Investors will be eyeing 45K again on Friday. US markets were closed for Thanksgiving.
India:
Nifty 50 - up 1.00%
Sensex - up 0.98%
What’s hot? 🔥
Enforcement Directorate nabbed ex-CEO and promoter of Cox and Kings, Peter Kerkar, as the debt saddled travel company is under the lens over allegations of money laundering.
The company showed up on ED’s notoriety-radar during the Yes Bank investigation, wherein C&K owed the bank some ₹3,500 crores. Then a senior bank official wrote to the regulators that the company’s financial statements did not add up—with little evidence on where thousands of crores of funds came from, with no return bank accounts to trace.
Investigations are underway, and things don’t look good for management.
Slack getting bailed out? 💬
Rumors are that Salesforce is holding talks to acquire Slack. Dow Jones broke the story while no official notification has been issued by either company. Slack stock promptly jumped when the news broke on Wednesday, trading almost 40% up in a single session.
How we got here—Slack is a phenomenal product, well loved by passionate users, but has mostly been out of favor with public market investors. With growth not moving as fast as imagined, and with Microsoft Teams out to eat their lunch, the company has mostly limped along since its IPO. Even under COVID things have been meh, with a modest ~50% growth in usage (compare that with Zoom or others that have 2xed or 3xed since March).
So for years now investors had been counting on a takeout—that perhaps a bigger buyer comes in for a rescue, and unlocks some value, and rewards patient investors for their loyalty. Google by far was considered the most credible candidate given their emerging agenda to build a cloud franchise from scratch, and then even Amazon, as AWS lacks a communication portal. Salesforce was a credible option too, but hardly a top pick on anyone's mind.
So when the news broke out, people seemed a bit baffled. Social app, cool product yada yada is true, but the synergies and opportunities on how Salesforce can turn this into a 2x or 3x business line weren't too apparent.
But then investors started reading between the lines on commentary from CEOs in the past and it turns out, MSFT Team’s dominance + integrations with rest of MSFT SaaS products, was starting to hurt Salesforce’s stickiness. Salesforce had to act.
Anyway, Slack is poised to report its quarterly earnings on December 9, and a deal should either be sealed or rejected by then. Investors are holding their breath, and if they’re lucky—it hopefully comes at a nice premium.
Transforming employee insurance 🙌
Plum, an employee health insurance player, has fetched nearly $4 million from Sequoia, Tanglin Venture Partners, and Incubate Fund—via the latest Surge accelerator batch.
The company provides a unified SaaS experience, allowing employers to offer and manage all healthcare and associated benefits in a singular view—kinda imitating the Benefitfocus model for India. The company provides coverage starting for less than $10/person while on the other hand helps insurance players with underwriting and fraud detection. The magic of marketplaces.🙌
And the metrics are mindblowing as well, the company is growing 200% quarter-on-quarter and has clocked in $1 million worth insurance premiums within the first three quarters of launch.
What matters—despite arduous efforts by the government to insure citizens, only 18% of urban employees and 14% of rural areas have some sort of health coverage in India—a disaster in the making with healthcare costs rising each day and an aging population wanting more. Plenty of room for more platforms like Plum to add value and shine.
Eyes set on GDP data 📉
Markets will be keeping an eye out for the GDP data for the second quarter due to be released today. From an unprecedented 24% decline in the June quarter, the RBI is now eyeing a decline in GDP of just 8.6% YoY for the September quarter. While independent investors and analysts are eyeing a slightly worse 10.2% drop.
Despite the quarter on quarter improvements, India’s GDP is expected to fare far worse than other nations, as others have tried to limit damage with ample stimulus (and bloated their economies in the process too). Anyway, expect the markets to set their mood near term based on this information. Fingers crossed.
What else are we snackin’ 🍿
🧸 Celebs floating D2C ventures - Alia Bhatt has launched her own venture in the kidswear category called Ed-a-mamma. The startup specializes in offering a range of naturally sourced and sustainable apparel for children in the age group of 2-14 years.
Hit that 💚 if you liked today’s issue.
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