Steamy IPOs 🔥
Online grocery spike, rapid tech innovation, and another US Immigration blow.
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Stock market summary:
US - S&P 500 down 1.08%
India - Sensex up 0.51%
US immigration deals a blow to international students 👊
In a fresh notice issued, the US immigration and customs enforcement (ICE) claims that non-immigrant F-1 and M-1 students attending schools that are operating entirely online for the next semester may not be allowed to stay in the US through the duration of the course.
Also, henceforth the government will not issue visas to students whose colleges will offer fully online courses and has asked foreign students in the US to either shift to in person classes or leave the country. Failure to do so will result in forced removal.
In the midst of the pandemic, many institutions are considering actively going fully online for the next academic year to prevent campus transmission. Harvard was one of the firsts to do so, boldly claiming that even students that are on the campus will have to learn remotely until a vaccine is found.
The immigration decision will affect thousands of Indian students in America as foreigners constitute about 5.5% of the students enrolling in US colleges and contributed around $41 Billion to the US in the Fiscal year 2019. India sent over 2 lakh students to the US in 2019, the largest after China. Read more.
Digital payment transactions on the rise 💳
According to Razorpay, after a major slump in online transactions during peak lockdown, digital payment transactions have seen a 23% jump in the last one month. The statistics were reported in a study analyzing consumer behavior and online spending patterns during and post lockdowns.
It helped that some segments of the economy particularly in healthcare, logistics and real estate are beginning to see some normalcy. Despite that however, last 100 day transactions are still down 12% overall.
The platform has observed a rise in use of cards by 40%, net banking by 10%, and UPI continues to be the preferred mode showing growth at 43% which is consistent with the broader spike in UPI transactions.
The company believes that the growth in the last 30 days is a strong indication of gradual revival of the digital economy. As digital services continue to take a large share of India’s consumer spending, payment processors and other enablers are ideally positioned for a quick recovery. Read more.
Data startup files to go public 👀
One of the most intriguing and secretive companies in the world, Palantir, has confidentially filed paperwork with US securities and exchange commission to go public.
The company was founded by legendary SV investor and entrepreneur Peter Thiel and others, and has attracted attention for its cutting edge work for the US intelligence and defense services.
Despite the economy going off track on the back of the pandemic, trailblazing companies continue to march undaunted, which is giving analysts hope that the IPO market is perhaps heating up once again for technology names.
Palantir did not disclose the size of the offering in its statement and is still deciding whether to go public via a direct listing or a traditional IPO.
Most recently, Palantir has also been working with a number of countries to tackle the COVID-19 virus by helping to trace the virus as well as manage the production of medical supplies. This one will be exciting. Read more.
Online grocery hits record high 📈
Despite gradual re-openings, US citizens are showing little to no interest in returning to stores for shopping, particularly as cases through the south and west of the country keep peaking.
According to a research released by Brick Meets Click and Mercatus, US online grocery sales have hit a record high at $7.2 Billion in June, a 9% Month-over-Month jump compared to May.
Some 45.6 Million households, or about 35% of US households, turned to online grocery shopping for a large amount of grocery needs, almost a 3x growth vs. a year ago. That penetration is staggering.
Just in March 2020, when the country first went into lockdowns, online grocery sales were about $4 Billion. Since then they have been growing rapidly to $5.3 Billion in April, and $6.6 Billion in May.
This shift will likely have lasting consequences for the economy, with vendors, distributors and stores-owners rapidly needing to adapt to some form of online-offline model to survive. Experts believe while the pandemic ending will certainly bring people back to stores, a considerable percentage of buying activity will permanently remain online. Read more.
Bullish on Southeast Asia and India 2.0 😎
Sequoia Capital India is kicking off two new funds, a venture fund and a growth fund, after it has raised $1.35 Billion from LPs in a bid to invest more in India and in South East Asia.
The venture fund is $525 Million is size, while the growth fund is $825M. Management is confident that the fresh raise will help it accelerate its already thriving model of backing exemplary founders in the region who are building category-defining companies.
In 2019, the company made about 50 investments, and hired some big names including former Google India head and former Uber India head. Sequoia also recently launched an accelerator program for India named “Surge” which has been quite successful with 50+ startups going through it so far.
Post pandemic, digital services have massively been accelerated in India especially in key services like ecommerce, fintech, digital learning, media etc. where we’ve barely scratched the surface relative to the opportunity. Naturally, investors are excited about it and India’s ecosystem will be a big winner of this renewed enthusiasm. Read more.
Tweet of the day -
A glimpse into the power of Indian innovation. 👏👏
What else are we snackin’ 🍿
🙌 Cam Scanner alternative launched in India - Chinese ban has made both the public and private companies innovative. The CM of West Bengal, Mamta Banerjee launched a new app called Selfscan which has been developed by the state's IT department and will work as an alternative to Cam scanner, to scan documents.
🧐 Dating app cleared for small business loan - Some furor ensued when a well funded same-sex dating app was approved for a $1 Million to $2 Million loan that was meant for small businesses suffering from the Coronavirus outbreak. The company was apparently doing over $100 Million in revenue.
🖥️ PC makers to up ad spending - Riding the demand for home offices, computer brands and laptop makers have upped their advertising spends and are likely to touch ₹450 Crore this fiscal year in India. Gradual reopening of markets with an increase in e-commerce deliveries of non-essential goods is helping serve demand as well.
📈 Unemployment up - Joblessness in urban areas expanded 56 basis points to 11.26% in the week that ended 5 July vs. the previous week, according to a CMIE survey. The increase comes after Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Assam, West Bengal and Maharashtra imposed new limitations of urban activity.
💯 100% LPG connections - Himachal Pradesh has become the first state in the country where all households have LPG gas connections, after 2.7 lakh families in the state were provided free gas connections under a newly proposed scheme.
👌 KA relaxes contract hiring rules - to prevent pandemic related job losses, the state government has made it easy to hire and fire workers on contracts across industries to help improve the ease of doing business.
👏 INFY’s generosity - India’s second largest IT services company Infosys Ltd has brought back over 200 employees and their families in a chartered flight from the US as a safety measure amid surging cases of COVID-19.
😈 New rivals emerge each day - Short video application, Trell has risen to prominence in the absence of competition from Chinese competitor Tik-Tok. The app, on Monday, claimed that it had registered over 1.2 crore downloads.
Hope you took a thing or two away from today’s edition. 😀
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