Some good ‘ol insider trading 🤘
Telco package, Fastest unicorn, and EV moves.
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Market summary: 📊
Another good session in India, putting Sensex now barely a stone’s throw away from 60K. US had a slow day, typical for this time of the year.
US:
S&P 500 - down 0.16%
Nasdaq - up 0.08%
India:
Nifty 50 - up 0.63%
Sensex - up 0.71%
What’s brewing hot? ☕
✅ Cleaning up after Jio’s party — GOI finally introduced a relief package to help India’s limping telecom sector stand on its two feet. Laggards Airtel and Vodafone-Idea get an extension of 4 years to pay back their AGR dues to the government (which is basically $$ these companies owe the govt. as part of a revenue-share agreement). Hope is that by delaying the payments, Airtel is free to use that cash to invest in 5G upgrades, while Vodafone gets to fix its organizational problems and defend market share. Also, the telcos will be allowed to seek more foreign investment, among other things. No free cash though!
✅ Insider trading, Part 1 — the CEO of Poonawalla Fincorp, Abhay Bhutada, resigned after being caught up in an insider trading scandal. Basically, when the Poonawalla empire moved to purchase Magma Fincorp a few months ago (which they later renamed to Poonawalla Fincorp BTW), Magma’s management decided to purchase stock of the company using some shell companies in the open market, hoping to make some quick dough at the pop when the acquisition news would be disclosed. That’s a strict no with regulators. All culprits have been banned from trading.
Can’t stop screwing up 🙄
What happened — Opensea, which has been the default marketplace for most people to purchase NFTs, says its Head of Product Nate Chastain was actually involved in insider trading of NFTs.
Nate would be buying NFT art he knew would be listed on Opensea’s homepage for sale using his own secret Ethereum wallet, and then would relist them for higher bids, pumping prices up and keeping the $$ for himself.
Unsurprisingly, the happenings were disclosed by some old-school steamy twitter activism.
What now — Opensea acknowledged Nate’s moves, apologized, and then let the man go. The company also promptly hired a Head of Compliance, but not unimaginable that either the SEC or federal trade bodies open an investigation, catalyzing an NFT winter.
Big picture — Opensea went from a simple idea to processing $3 billion worth of NFTs a month in under 36 months. Incidents like this only delay and weaken mainstream trust of the ecosystem.
Zero to Unicorn in 21 months 🦄
Apna.co, the Linkedin for blue collar workers, closed a $100 million Series C round from Tiger Global, Sequoia and a few others, doubling valuation to $1.1 billion.
Apna’s platform basically helps a buzzing tradesmen and blue collar workforce in India find jobs, discover appropriate upskilling options, join communities, and network — with 16 million monthly users, 1.5K+ recruiters. Last month, the platform facilitated 18 million interviews, which is quite something…
Post-raise focus will be on monetization.
Meanwhile, Discord doubled its valuation 🤙
After rejecting Microsoft’s $10B offer, and having cozied up to Sony as the default chat tool on PS4, Discord’s fortunes have clearly turned — now the gamer favorite has raised $500 million from late stage investors like Fidelity at a $15 billion valuation promising an IPO soon.
Goldman pushes deeper in consumer banking 💪
What happened — Goldman Sachs acquired consumer lending platform, GreenSky for $2.24 billion, as the old-school bank looks to sharpen its fintech offensive.
Goldman jumped nose first into the fintech wars with the launch of its digital-banking product Marcus about 5 years ago. Although Marcus has lagged rivals like Chime, Varo, or even Cash App and Venmo, Goldman thinks it can still deliver value to a boomer and late millennial audience — one that values trust and security more than “vibes” that your friendly neobank peddles.
Anyway, GreenSky has an old-school Buy-Now-Pay-Later business, basically focusing on home improvements (buy a refrigerator, new flooring, that kinda old people shit) with a loan book that runs into $30 billion. That will now be integrated directly into Marcus to allow 8 million users get loans at offline merchants!
While we’re on old finance, 👇
Volkswagen is selling its vehicle loan business in India to Kotak Mahindra Group, trying to exit from losing endeavours. Kotak says they’re keen on expanding their market share in the high-value auto-loans segment, and will get a roster of about 30,000 customers, and a ₹1,300 crore loan book to push further. Not bad!
Closing out — some EV updates 🔌
TVS is buying out a Swiss Electric bike company called EGO movement for about $20 million — its second acquisition in the EV space after it had purchased British brand Norton Motorcycles last year.
EGO actually makes electric bicycles and some cargo bikes and scooters, and TVS plans on scaling the business as an independent entity in Europe.
Meanwhile, the disruptors keep moving ahead ☝️
Ola managed to get 300K reservations for its electric scooters on Day 1 — netting orders worth nearly ₹600 crores. Talk about running a waitlist. 👏
What else are we snackin’ 🍿
🏦 Getting ready - Pine Labs appointed Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs as advisors for its IPO in the US next year. Keep an eye.
🤙 Making moves - ITC finally showing some life, up more than 6% in yesterday’s session. Let the memes begin!
Hit that 💚 if you liked today’s issue.
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How many Unicorns this year till now?