Unicorn showers 🦄

Titan is back, 7-Eleven is gone, and Zodiac is found.

Oct 08, 2021

Market summary: 📊

India resumed the upward journey on Thursday, putting Sensex a stone’s throw away from 60K. US had a positive day too, after lawmakers reached a deal to keep the government funded.

US:

S&P 500 - up 0.83%
Nasdaq - up 1.05%

India:

Nifty 50 - up 0.82%
Sensex - up 0.82%

What’s poppin’ on Friday! ☕

✅ Mota bhai goes to 7-Eleven — 2 days after cash-strapped Future Retail terminated its franchisee agreement with 7-Eleven, Reliance Retail swooped in and got the rights to operate the brand in India for itself. Future and 7-Eleven had entered into an agreement to bring the US-based company here in 2019, but then Future blew itself up, crumbling under its debt mountain during COVID. Reliance will now open the first 7-Eleven store this week in Mumbai, and possibly combine expansion of the convenience store (beverages, snacks, coffee and that kinda thing) with its retail fuel locations!

Boom Thats How Its Done GIF by Chicks on the Right

✅ BNPL is kicking ass — looming festive season is helping drive broad adoption of buy-now-pay-later products in India. In a chat with Moneycontrol, ZestMoney says its BNPL user base has expanded 10x over the last 3 months, with an average credit size of ₹14K per customer. Amazon is claiming transaction volumes on BNPL products shot up 10x during its mega sale event! So does Flipkart. The rapid adoption of this credit-at-checkout product is making the credit card industry sweat.

3 unicorns in 3 days 🦄

This time, it's food-tech — cloud-kitchen pioneer Rebel Foods, closed a $175 million Series F round from Qatar Investment Authority and Qatar’s Sovereign Wealth, doubling valuation to $1.4 billion! 👏

2021 unicorn tally = 32.

Rebel operates self-owned brick-and-mortar brands like Faasos, Ovenstory Pizza, as well as franchises for international brands like Wendy’s — under a cloud model, with no dine-in or takeaway, and orders processed and serviced only through food delivery platforms.

In all, the company has scaled to 6 cities, operating ~45 brands, bringing $150 million in annual revenue!

Bottomline — in addition to saving 30-40% costs on expensive store-front real estate, Cloud Kitchens allow for rapid experimentation of menus, food concepts, and ideas — before you pursue a full-blow offline expansion. Rebel is leading charge on this multi-billion market in India.

Titan puts up a solid show for the street 💪

Plenty is riding on how recovery held up during the last quarter, and so far things look solid.

Titan offered great confidence — reporting sharp recovery in consumer spending in its stores, resulting in revenue growth in almost all segments.

Quick look at some numbers:

Titan’s core jewelry business jumped 78% YoY
Online sales of jewelry grew by 95% YoY during the quarter
Titan also opened a total of 47 stores across its jewelry, eyewear and watch brands — omnichannel FTW

Also, management said foot traffic has recovered up to ~65% levels across its locations in malls and stores — music to investors’ ears, who rewarded stock up a solid 10% by end of the day!

Key takeaway — Titan became the only other Tata company, outside of TCS, to break through the ₹2 trillion market cap mark yesterday.

Quick look at a SaaS acquisition 🧐

What happened — Dairy.com, a US based supply chain software provider for the dairy industry, acquired an Indian SaaS startup called Mr. Milkman.

Mr. Milkman makes custom software tools for functions like ERP, CRM, monitoring, and analytics — helping 60+ dairy vendors and brands in India manage everything from procurement to delivery to operations. Deal value wasn’t known, but Milkman had raised ~$500K in venture funding. Tiny vote of confidence in the SaaS space.

While we’re on acquisitions, 💰

Twitter, in a bid to get leaner and meaner, and focus on its future as a creator platform — sold an advertising technology business from its belly, called MoPub, to another ad-tech company AppLovin, for $1.5 billion.

MoPub made it easy for independent developers to monetize their apps — by bringing Twitter’s ad technology + brand relationships to place ads on their platforms. Twitter had acquired the company for $350 million in 2013, which since had grown to churn $188 million/year in revenue. Not a bad payout!

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Closing out — Invesco bets on Ixigo 🤝

Everyone’s trying to time the travel segment’s rebound, and Invesco wants a piece too… The global asset manager acquired a ~3.5% stake in Indian travel platform Ixigo, buying out shares from Chinese investor Fosun.

Ixigo is planning a ₹1,600 crore IPO soon, and the Chinese shareholders were itching to rush out the door, given souring sentiment and problems in their own backyard. In any case, the checks continue to highlight foreign-money’s piquing interest in diverse segments and ventures in India.

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What else are we snackin’ 🍿

🚘 Growing empire - Ola launched a vehicle commerce platform called Ola Cars, selling both new and pre-owned vehicles. Full stack, on steroids!

👀 Found him - a group of independent investigators who look into cold criminal cases say they’ve found the Zodiac Killer, as a man who passed away in 2018. If you’re lost here, add the Zodiac to your weekend watch-list.