Tesla incoming
Nasty tech conflict, furniture wars, and Glance steals TikTok.
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What’s brewing hot?☕
✅ InMobi’s close to snatching the Tok—TikTok owner Bytedance, is apparently selling the India operations of TikTok to InMobi’s Glance. Softbank, who’s an investor in both Bytedance and InMobi is brokering the marriage. Glance has its own short video application Roposo, one of the leaders in the category (100M+ reported users), and TikTok’s assets could give them a decisive advantage in the game over rivals. Unsure if the deal would involve licensing TikTok’s notoriously outstanding recommendation algorithm though, because if it does, the other apps competing here are better off folding operations by Monday afternoon.
✅ Coming in hot for the Budget rally—foreign investors are enthusiastically piling into the Indian markets, thanks to the fervent budget pitch, combined with promising growth in profits for corporate India, as well as strong recovery in consumer demand. For the first two weeks of February alone, nearly ₹22K crores of foreign private investor capital came chasing Indian stonks and debt-based assets. That’s nearly 60% more than the influx we saw for the entire month of Jan. The trend is not expected to recede anytime soon as FOMO takes control of the steering wheel.
Zuck is out for blood 👊
Apple and Facebook’s conflict over user privacy is getting uglier by the day.
Some context—Apple’s newly launched iOS-14 update gives users more control over what data they’d like to share with third party apps, and by default switches off certain data privileges that FB and other apps relied on to serve ads. This is directly hurting Facebook’s operations, and killing its cash-cow advertising revenue base. In its defense, FB is arguing that their products are able to deliver a useful experience to consumers because of the data they leverage, and not doing so will rob people of services they most admire.
Anyway, the conflict that was boiling internally has now slowly started to spill over in the public, leading to a war of words in the recent weeks:
Mid Jan, Facebook told investors its 2021 revenue will be hurt directly because of Apple—FB stock is under pressure, barely moving for 6 months
Then FB decided to sue Tim Cook & Co., for intentionally taking steps to hurt its operations
The spat turned ugly when Tim Cook retaliated—in an unusual public takedown calling out FB for using algorithms to “juice” engagement while hurting the society by spreading hatred
Zuckerberg bluntly states in an interview that Apple is out to exclusively single out and kill its business
WSJ now reports that Zuckerberg is leading the fight by himself and apparently told employees “we need to inflict pain” on Apple for damaging the FB brand.
We’re still in the 1st innings, but two of the biggest tech Titans taking on each other is not ideal for business and certainly doesn’t make the markets feel at ease. This will probably dominate the news cycles over the next few months.
Meanwhile, FB’s quest for a computing platform continues: ☝️
FB is rolling out its own smartwatch, designed around healthcare and messaging tools—in yet another hardware push despite most of its earlier attempts landing flat. The device is still under the wraps, but it’ll have the standard features any smartwatch brings today, including tracking basic health metrics, while prioritizing sending messages and making calls via the FB ecosystem.
Why move into Watches though—majority of Facebook’s problems come from the fact that the company does not have its own hardware computing platform—a device base that it can leverage to perennially bring relevant consumer services to the masses (Apple has the iPhone, and Google Android). Being over reliant on other platforms is what’s making the company susceptible to pushback and scrutiny from others.
Zuck was in fact counting on VR-as-a-platform opportunity to finally make this shift happen (FB owns Oculus VR), but adoption of that technology is taking much longer than imagined. Anyway, hard to believe a generic watch would be the answer tho.
Latest from the Venture Street 💰
Online furniture startup PepperFry raised a modest ₹35 crore debt round from InnoVen Capital, with plans of a follow on raise aimed at fueling nationwide expansion in the making.
A formidable player in the online furniture game, PepperFry’s position was thrown in a knot when lockdowns threw the entire industry into a swirl mid-year. Then Reliance picked up competitor Urban Ladder a few months ago, and lent them access to its deep pockets, ramping up competitive assault.
However, thanks to work-from-home demand, as well as surprise spending from bored consumers killing time by upgrading their indoors, demand slowly managed to crawl back—which helped PepperFry’s revenues grow about 26% in 2020, although the online furniture game expanded at a much faster pace, especially in large cities.
Going forward—Fending off competition and building a sustainable enterprise here is going to take a lot more patience. PepperFry is now counting on an omnichannel strategy for its comeback, aiming to launch 20+ franchise owned & operated studios in Tier-2 & Tier 3 cities.
Just a couple billionaires, doing billionaire shizz 🙌
Jack Dorsey and rapper Jay Z are setting aside 500 Bitcoins ($23 odd millions depending upon when you check the prices) to form a trust that will invest in and push for innovation in the Bitcoin ecosystem coming from India and Nigeria. The fund will be called ₿trust.
Their choice of India and Africa is fascinating—primarily driven by the massive surge in interest in usage of crypto in both markets, while as both regions struggle to manage regulator interference in allowing free access to the currency. The trust is now seeking board members to manage the money they’ve pooled.
FYI—believe it or not, nearly 7.5 million Indians are said to be holding crypto currencies, and Nigeria’s crypto trading volumes are second only to the US. Emerging markets are leading by example in this game.
And while we’re here on crypto, ✋
Even as global governments drag their feet on the currency, mainstream capitalism continues to rally around the ecosystem. Morgan Stanley’s investment arm, Counterpoint Global (a $150 billion operation BTW) is exploring the possibility of hodling coins so that its investors don’t miss out on exposure to the asset class.
Given the size of their operations, if they’re going in, it's likely going to be a whale’s position! So far this month, Tesla, Mastercard, BNY Mellon and now Morgan Stanley announced major moves into the currency. The risk of staying out has never been higher.
Closing out—BLR claims Tesla’s incoming 👋
Politicians are dropping hints that Tesla has decided to build their India manufacturing unit somewhere close to Bengaluru. There’s no official confirmation from Tesla yet though.
Building a supply chain from scratch, with a million moving parts, bulk of which could still be imported, is going to be a daunting endeavor. But Tesla’s history of buildout speed has been outstanding—their Shanghai facility was built in barely 168 days.
Also, premium segment EVs on the roads could finally bring the consumer acceptance that EVs are demanding and book a HUGE victory for the local ecosystem—right from suppliers, to vehicle resellers, to the labor market, to other startups and ventures building for the EV space.
What else are we Snackin’ 🍿
📍 Google Maps, step aside please - ISRO will work with MapMyIndia to make “atma-nirbhar” mapping and location based services for India, in a fresh agreement between the two entities that will integrate the catalogue of ISRO’s satellite imagery and earth observation data to provide more detailed and comprehensive mapping solutions to the people of the country.
👊 Beefing up the grocery wars - expanding its product catalogue and appeal to consumers, Amazon will be integrating its pantry products with its instant grocery service Fresh, bringing delivery times to under 2 hours over a wider product selection. Investments in last mile logistics throughout the pandemic are bringing things to fruition. The service will be rolled out initially in Bengaluru, New Delhi, Mysore and Ahmedabad over the next 2 weeks.
Hit that 💚 if you liked today’s issue.
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