Market summary: đ
Stocks continue to face pressure in India, pulling another notch down on Tuesday. US continued to spiral down as well, with the Nasdaq now down 5% from all time highs.
US:
S&P 500 -Â down 0.75%
Nasdaq - down 1.04%
India:
Nifty 50 - down 0.25%
Sensex - down 0.29%
Whatâs brewing hot?â
1ď¸âŁ Oldies are spending big â Toyota became the latest old-school automaker to commit big time to an EV shift, promising to spend $35 billion to electrify its fleet. Toyotaâs EV strategy will focus solely on its premium brand, Lexus, which will roll out a troop of 15 vehicles, targeting 3.5 million annual EV sales by 2030. Fyi, Toyota currently makes ~$275 billion in annual revenues, selling 7.6 million cars.Â
2ď¸âŁ How can we help â Reebok may be a dead brand worldwide, but there still is some juice left in the name in India, bets Aditya Birla Fashion. The retailer signed an agreement with Reebok's new owners, Authentic Brands, to distribute and sell Reebok products in India. Birla manages Louis Philippe and several other footwear brands, so theyâre not really new to the game but its a tough gig ahead, with Reebokâs India ops barley making ~âš320 crores a year, down 25% YoY last year.
Nikeâs bets on the future đ
What happened â Nike is buying out a virtual goods studio called RTFKT, that creates NFT based digital-art in the form of virtual sneakers, shoes, and other drops â exclusively for the Metaverse.Â
Nike, as you know, is at the center of collectibles and sneaker culture, making/selling some of the most premier and rarest footwear items â which are marketed by A-list celebs, get traded in secondary markets for ridiculous sums, and have rap-songs written about them⌠things thatâs make no sense to a common man.
Similarly RTFKT makes these rare looking virtual shoes that you can own, and possibly wear on your avatars in the Metaverse. Makes no sense either, but so far, their items have sold for over $70 million in total!Â
Anyway, with the acquisition, Nike got its hands on one of the most talented creative houses within the Web 3 space, securing its brandâs future in case the promised-tech takes off.
Deal value wasnât known, but rumors peg a ~$100 million arrangement. RTFKT had raised an $8 million seed round from a16z.
Bottomline â legacy brands missed the internet 2.0 wave, and then gasped for breath for nearly 2 decades operating on terms dictated by big tech platforms. Canât afford to miss this one!
Who got the monies đ°
King of low-code, Airtable, raised a massive $735 million round from Franklin Templeton, Salesforce, etc. â at a whopping $11 billion valuation!Â
For those totally hearing this for the first time, Airtable is like an Excel-workbook on steroids â an online platform that allows sheets to be more malleable, almost like a heavy database with API access, with ability to build forms, basic tools, and light apps on top of it. Enterprise productivity czars rely on the platform to glue-tape processes without having to pull in expensive engineers to build software.
Anyway, stats are phenomenal! Annual recurring revenues top $100 million, with 300K+ enterprises using the product. Not bad for an 8 year old product.
Then onto an early stage acquisition, âď¸
Neo-bank Finin decided to fold its hand, selling in a $10 million deal to B2B neo-banking operation in India, Open Money. Launched in 2019, Finin had raised about a million dollars from VCs so far, and was focus on consumer banking, savings.
Fyi, Open had raised a big pot from Google, Temasek recently.
Media companies marrying each other đ¤
Vox Media, the YouTube documentary specialist, which also owns The Verge, Recode, and a dozen other publications is spending hundreds of millions to acquire Group Nine Media, which owns outlets like NowThis, Thrillist â forming one of the largest digital media publishers worldwide.
Digital media companies are struggling to make $$ in a world where tech-platforms fronting their content and control the game. So the only way to reasonably survive is to get big ASAP, gain leverage, and then cross sell ads, subscriptions.
So the industry has seen a whole lot of consolidation lately â with deals like Buzzfeed buying Huffpost, Vice buying Refinery29, and such.
Anyway, the combined company will now make $700 million+ in revenues, with $100 million+ in profits.
Closing out â Myanmar goes rogue with crypto đ¤Ż
What happened â the National Unity Government (NUG) of a civil-war torn Myanmar, went straight up against the central bank and announced its plans to accept Tether ($USDT) as the official currency of the country!
NUG is a shadow government aka, a banned govt. that was formed after the military ousted the elected president Aung San Suu Kyi a while ago.
NUG has been fighting military rule since, and is now hoping crypto lets them raise funds to give the people a chance at a democratically elected regime. đ¤ˇââď¸ El Salvador smiles.
Burmese central bank meanwhile has labeled all crypto illegal for over a year now, fining and prosecuting citizen owners.
Why care â be surprised if other smaller countries arenât thinking about such moves as an answer to all their problems, driving hype and maybe even adoption.
What else are we Snackinâ đż
đśď¸ AR is the future â OPPO will launch an AR device called Air Glass, trying to get ahead of Apple with mixed reality hardware. Watchout Tim Cook.Â
đ Doge for merch â Tesla will now accept Dogecoin for its merch on a test basis. Tough to imagine what Elon thinks heâs upto with these shenanigans.
đŞ Gotta stay competitive - Netflix slashed its India prices once again, trying to match up pricing of Disney and cut deeper into heartland audience.
Hit that đ if you liked todayâs issue.
You can forward this email or share FC on social media by clicking the button below. Thanks and Ciao! đ