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Market summary: 📊
Pretty upbeat open to the week in India, but we wont get too excited just yet. US saw a horrific Monday, with tech slammed into the ground.
US:
S&P 500 - down 1.04%
Nasdaq 100 - down 2.63%
India:
Nifty 50 - up 0.80%
Sensex - up 0.60%
What’s brewing hot? ☕
✅ What a mess—Sony was scheduled to launch the much hyped PlayStation 5 last summer. The pandemic obviously ruined that party, so a patient Sony waited and waited and waited and finally capitulated to fan pressure and launched the device in the middle of the global semiconductor shortage. Now the PS can’t find components to deliver on its order, thanks to semi pipelines clogged, leaving PS loyalists flustered. Yesterday the CFO told the markets he doesn’t expect supply to smoothen out until next year.
First things first… ☝️
Surprise surprise—nobody likes being tracked!
iOS 14.5, the controversial iPhone software update, hands over users the power to share their info with third party apps, letting them control if they want to be tracked across sites by companies that literally pay their bills by harvesting your data. Turns out, only 4% of IOS users are cool with it.
Over the last 12 months, Facebook for example, made ~$170 per user it served in the west, where the majority rely on the iOS ecosystem. If you’re now unable to track the user with the same precision, those ad rates are going to come down, profits could decay, and the circus tent could come down crashing pretty soon.
That stat is making Wall Street lose its mind—literally every ad-tech stock has been slammed unconscious, while analysts have been slapping “sell” calls on $FB and $Google, despite mouth watering 45%+ revenue growth rates last quarter.
Economics of vaccinations, a dinnertime special 💉
As if the pandemic’s merciless bulldozing wasn’t enough to derail economies already, the cost of mass vaccination and politics around it is threatening to drill the last nail in the coffin of struggling states.
Bloomberg cites Indian states that are economic laggards, will have to spend 30% of their annual healthcare budgets on getting people vaccinated
Choosing vaccines, and availability, and price structures is leaving room for uncertainty and delays in getting shots through
Meanwhile, taxation on vaccines is another topic pissing citizens off, with the FM responding that taxes on prices of vaccines right at purchase allows manufacturers to offset their costs of raw materials, which otherwise would have led to cost increases.
We’re no experts in government budgeting or public health, but it does appear a blanket nationwide policy that offers singular clarity on “just freaking go get your shots” could just help clear the mess and accelerate everything from procurement to inoculation considerably.
Quick peek down venture street 💰
BharatPe raised a quick ₹50 crores debt round from Northern Arc Capital, to fund its MSME lending services, barely months after raising a ₹200 crore pot from Alteria Capital and others.
The payment processor’s lending business is humming along quite nicely—since the pandemic’s onset, BharatPe has processed over ₹1,600 crores in loans, sent out to 200K+ merchants, most of which are largely unable to secure friendly credit from traditional vendors and banks.
Target is now set to deploy over $1 billion into the MSME markets, serving over 10 lakh merchants by the end of the year. Audacious, but possible.
What matters: fintech platforms, especially payment processors, are at a distinct advantage with a vantage point offering deep insight into spending and earning patterns, seasonality, and other trends of small merchants' financials, which combined with state of the art modeling and analysis, offers visibility and conviction that traditional banks could only dream of.
It’s a huge whitespace, with ample opportunity to make margins, and if $100 billion giants like Square is any proof, then extremely successful businesses can be built at scale.
Closing out — Self driving or no self driving? 🤔
that depends on who we’re talking to…
Tesla has been dancing with the devil when it comes to self-driving capabilities for a long time, telling regulators one thing, and consumers another.
And that couldn’t have been substantiated any more than now...
In a closed door meeting with the motor vehicle division of the state of California USA, which BTW runs a pretty comprehensive self driving testing program for any company on the planet, Tesla execs claimed the company’s AI is at best a Level 2 autonomy—aka pretty basic.
“Elon’s tweet does not match the engineering reality of the team”—says officials of the DMV, in a transcript of the call that was published in the public domain by corporate myth busters PlainSite.
Meanwhile, Musk routinely tells investors that true autonomy is just “another software update” away, a lie that pretty much forms the basis of the software-like valuation multiple that the Tesla stock trades on.
Why the hoopla—since the launch of the self driving system “autopilot”, nearly 170+ people have been killed in a Tesla car, with 18+ incidents with full driving engaged.
It's all fun and games when you’re pumping coins on SNL, but when people start losing their lives because of an executive's double speak… the wrath will likely follow.
What else are we snackin’ 🍿
🤷 But who cares anymore?- Clubhouse finally rolled out its much awaited Android app, but it’d be restricted only to the US, with gradual roll outs elsewhere. And then there’s the invite-only model still. GTFO already.
👏 Marketplaces come through - Snapdeal launched a new service called Sanjeevani to connect COVID-19 patients with potential plasma donors. Designed as an internal tool initially, the app is being rolled out nationwide.
Hit that 💚 if you liked today’s issue.
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