Unicorn showers
More data leaks, and stuff from the week before.
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Market summary: 📊
Friday turned out meh, but overall a positive week in India despite rising cases dominating the news cycle. US investors went into the weekend on a high note.
US:
S&P 500 - up 0.77%
Nasdaq 100 - up 0.63%
India:
Nifty 50 - down 0.26%
Sensex - down 0.31%
What’s brewing hot? ☕
✅ Hey, check me out too—days after Coinbase surprised the markets with its stupendous growth numbers, Robinhood decided to give a glimpse into its own lil crypto empire. About 9.5 million active users purchased crypto assets on the app last quarter, up 460% against last year. Robinhood was last valued at about $40 billion, which kinda seems like a steal when compared with Coinbase’s $100 billion+ price tag.
✅ Amazon 1, Unions 0—1,798 Amazonians voted to reject the formation of an employee union in a distribution facility in Alabama USA, in a groundbreaking vote. Calls for setting up a union got only 700 votes. If you’re too young to recall anything about unions from their heyday, these are labor groups formally uniting workers in a particular industry, to fight crony capitalism and advocate for employee and worker rights. But then… over time union leadership became infested with corruption, and ended up becoming capitalism’s biggest nemesis.
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Booze over, party cancel 😢
The global shortage of semiconductor chips has begun eating into product-launch plans of tech companies. Most notably, Google had to cancel the launch of its low cost Pixel 5a, because well what’s the point launching at all, if you can’t fulfil orders coming in...
The phone was supposed to be a key product in Google’s push to control the mid to low-cost smartphone market in regions like India—where on one hand it is being attacked by Chinese knock-offs, while on the other users are increasingly getting lured into the iOS clan.
Google’s promised plans of launching a sexy set of Pixel buds at this years’ developer conference are still on though.
Bottomline: the lasting chip shortage could end up changing the long-term consumer electronics landscape more than we immediately realize today. If company’s can’t launch their key products on time, have to delay orders, and struggle with jumbled supply chains, it opens up the market for serious share shifts on a long enough timeline.
Just take it all... 🙄
Users' privacy be damned. LinkedIn joins Facebook in finding data of some 500 million or so members scrapped from its website, now available for sale on the dark web.
Unlike FB, LinkedIn's data seems recent and was stolen by an anonymous hacker, and contains users’ names, e-mail addresses, phone numbers, birthdays—the standard menu. Oddly, the data is laced in with information taken from a bunch of other portals and websites.
As we had called out before, 500 million is a massive number, and global nations aren’t going to be sitting around for the US to tame its companies this time. Italy for example has already kicked off an investigation into LinkedIn’s practices.
Aight, that’s it for today! Quick look at the hottest stuff from last week...
🔥 Desperate times—Twitter knocked on Clubhouse’s door to check if the business would be willing to sell for an eye popping $4 billion. Clubhouse didn’t seem too warm, and then Twitter promptly released its own audio-social services, Spaces. While Twitter investors take comfort in the company’s newfound aggression, already validated by a sexy pipeline of features being built for the creator economy, loyal bag holders were just relieved to remain $4 billion richer.
✌️ Issa victory—Google breathed a sigh of relief after winning a 10-year-long historic legal battle against Oracle, which was claiming $9 billion in fees from Google for using a bunch of Java code to build the open-source Android mobile operating system. Some local US courts had originally sided with Oracle, but the Supreme Court sealed the verdict in Google’s favor, reaffirming the broad software industry’s belief in open source R&D.
📈 Das some real growth—crypto trading app Coinbase gave investors a sneak peek into its monstrous growth engine. Thanks to an epic tear in the crypto markets, the company’s revenues exploded 9x to $1.8 billion in Q1 2021, with profits topping $800 million, and quarterly volumes processed running over $300 billion. At the end of Q1, 56 million crypto buyers are using the service. Stonkers will be rushing to wet their beaks at open on April 14.
🤦🏽♀️Wall Street almost broke its back—Archegos Capital implosion caught big banks with their pants down. While the smart ones like Goldman and Morgan Stanley managed to limit losses, few like Credit Suisses and CitiBank ended up holding the bag on $5 billion+ in write offs. Banker bosses were PISSED, and the firings began Monday, with Credit Suisse’s Chief Risk Officer becoming the first to be asked to pack things by lunch hour.
💪 New ad king on the block— Amazon’s own lil advertising empire made $15 billion in revenues for 2020, expanding more than 50% for the year, to now control 10.3% of the total digital advertising market in the US. What makes ad-placements on Amazon so attractive is the fact that ads appear so close to purchase decisions. Significant number of shoppers already claim they start their searches on Amazon first instead of Google, and the company’s rise is becoming a real threat to Google’s cash cow business.
👀 Duniya badalne chale the— You either die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become the villain. Days after Byju's wrapped its Series F round, part of the check went to seal the deal on the $1 billion acquisition of Aakash Educational Services, making the company more like the very thing it set out to replace. But the move may be smart, with Aakash supplementing Byju’s digital leadership with an omnipresent offline brand with 200+ locations across the country, and a self-sufficient ₹1,000 crores revenue base, throwing unparalleled firepower for execution. Will be interesting to watch the marriage play out.
💰 It rained Unicorns in April—India had an unprecedented week on Venture Street, minting more unicorns in 5 days than one can keep up with. Quick rundown:
Social commerce platform Meesho wrapped up a $300 million Series E raise, revising its valuation from $700 million to $2.1 billion
Online pharmacy and healthtech platform Pharmeasy saw valuation set to $1.5 billion post a $350 million raise from Prosus Ventures and TPG Growth
Mutual fund distributor Groww closed its $83 million Series D round at a $1 billion valuation. Tiger Global led the bid, making this Tiger’s 4th unicorn of the year
Messaging based communications platform Gupshup raised $100 million in its Series F again from Tiger Global at a $1.4 billion valuation
Kunal Shah’s baby CRED raised $215 million for its Series D round with Falcon Edge and Coatue leading the bid, setting valuation at $2.2 billion, formally landing the business in unicorn orbit, in under 3 years
Swiggy raised another $800 million at a $5 billion valuation tag, again from Falcon Edge, with Goldman Sachs and several others pitching in
Last to join the party is Sharechat, pulling in a $502 million check from Tiger again, at a 2.1 billion valuation. Existing backer Twitter pitched in, while Snap made a debut
Phew…
📸 Yo mamas Instagram—Pinterest is in final talks to acquire VSCO, a photo and video editing app that’s kinda like Instagram minus the social features. No deal tag has been disclosed yet, but VSCO was last valued at a gargantuan $550 million. The app basically allows users to slap a bunch of custom high-quality filters that give images a jazzy, 2021-vibe, and Pinterest hopes of using the app’s tech to appeal to younger folks in using its service, as it fires on all cylinders to capitalize on the “social commerce” opportunity that FB and the other social media leaders are taking forever to capitalize on.
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