Video pods 🎙️
Unstoppable edtech, privacy nightmare, and super-app IPO.
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Market summary: 📊
Global markets made a roaring comeback yesterday. Despite that, India finished the week lower than it started while the US market, particularly technology, gained some ground.
US:
S&P 500 - up 1.60%
Nasdaq 100 - up 2.34%
India:
Nifty 50 - up 2.26%
Sensex - up 2.28%
Capital talks 💰
Unacademy scooped up UPSC test prep platform Coursavy for an undisclosed amount, putting to use the $150 million the company had scooped up from Softbank in their latest round.
Founded barely 20 months ago, the startup’s primary focus is UPSC examination prep — an arena where Unacademy had gotten its start back in the day. The platform conducts live classes, including mentorship sessions, question resolution with a community styled learning environment. Currently coursavy has over 70K learners across its platforms! 👏
For Unacademy, this is their fourth acquisition of the year, after they scooped up Kreatryx, Prepladder and most recently CodeChef.
Look pal — all I’m saying is… if you haven’t added an edtech hook to your startup by now, there still may be time my friend. Carpe diem.
Bottomline: don’t expect this show to end anytime soon. India’s education market is a $110 billion+ space, literally frozen in its tracks nationwide due to COVID. Digitization is inevitable and so far we’re probably less than 1% done. Still time to build!
An awesome agri-tech raise for a change — 🌱
Samunnati, an agriculture finance startup that lends money to farmers, producer organizations, storage establishments and other parties in and around the agriculture value chain has raised a $20 million debt round from the US Gov’s financing body that deploys capital into low income areas in developing countries.
Founded in 2014, the company had disbursed over ₹4,000 crores in loan volume so far, a sizable amount which also proves the resilience of its operating model. In addition to providing capital, the company helps with aggregation, linkages and visibility into the supply chain, ensuring farmers and market participants get good prices and support.
At a time when India’s farmers have been gut-punched by COVID, any move to digitize, equip and bring them up to speed in the new world is truly heartening.
Finally, in social we have — 📱
Sharechat... which closed on a $40 million pre-Series E round led by existing investors Lightspeed Ventures, Twitter, and SAIF Partners, along with new entities. The raise brings ShareChat’s total outside funds to $264 million.
Building a vernacular social platform for India’s regional internet users, Sharechat’s market position is enviable, with the company pulling in half-a-million users each hour apparently. New funds will be used to boost short video platform, Moj, which has recently crossed over 50 million downloads.
Besides, capital will also be put to seed growth of the creator ecosystem, and establishing partnerships with music labels.
From podcasts to movies — a masterstroke 👌
When Spotify made the move to go deeper into podcasts, analysts and investors weren't impressed much. Is that market big enough to go after while the likes of Apple, Google were scaling up assault to steal music streaming market share? What if the market takes long to mature and Spotify runs out of money? Million questions loomed.
But what investors had missed was that Spotify was looking to build an end-to-end content machine — much like Netflix, and to achieve that, reducing dependence on “contracts” and “licences” to supply audio content was key. Even fewer observers could see further down the line that perhaps one day Spotify would be interested to turn its original podcasts and audio shows into TV shows and movies.
That’s what happened last night, when the streamer disclosed a partnership with Chernin Entertainment, the producer of legendary movies and shows like Ford v Ferrari, Hidden Figures, and New Girl, to convert Spotify originals into video content. Everyone is connecting the dots now.
What’s interesting about this approach is that podcasts are much much cheaper to make than TV shows, which gives Spotify an inexpensive way to test if the video-content is worth making in the first place — an advantage that Netflix or Disney even lack.
Which brings us to an interesting question — can Spotify use this approach to make a wildcard entry and make a dent into the video streaming market? Should Netflix be rattled? This latest move by the company puts them in a completely different light. Watchout. 🤔
While we’re on the subject — 🍎
Apple, as it appears, quickly sniffed blood and went out and acquired a startup, Scout FM, that brings the radio station experience to podcasts. The company basically let’s you tune into “stations” and lets you hear podcasts on various subjects — making discovery easy. Sounds cool.
Goodbye privacy 👋
Amazon’s hardware event yesterday was quite a spectacle. Spooky even, depending on which side of the privacy aisle you are on. The company launched a bunch of products extending the security hardware line, added more speakers with Alexa, and launched a surprise cloud gaming service Luna, stumping Microsoft (xCloud) and Google(Stadia).
Here’s highlights of notable things that came out of the stables —
Launched a new spherical echo speaker for a friendly price point
Launched an Echo Show with Netflix app on it (that’s a new)
Luna cloud gaming service + a controller
Couple of Eero home wifi routers
And the wackiest of all — an autonomous flying security drone for INSIDE YOUR HOME!
If Bezos & co. listening in to your family’s living room conversations wasn’t horrifying enough for you already, now you can have a piece of hardware with a camera strapped onto it flying around your house. Whoever comes up with these ideas…
Anyway, Amazon has made a few things clear here 1. Its strategy with smart-home is not just another simple test anymore — they're dead serious about conquering this space 2. They have the penchant to innovate and push the market — how will Apple and Google respond? 3. It won’t leave Microsoft, Sony, and Google to win the cloud gaming space without any competition.
The super-app IPO 🙌
Alibaba affiliated Ant Group is set to make history, ringing in the world’s largest IPO, powered by its vision to bring end-to-end financial services to the Chinese.
The company, via a dual listing in Hong Kong and Shanghai, will pull in about $35 billion, valuing them at well over $250 billion. For comparison, Aramco, the state run oil corporation of the Saudi’s had pulled in $25 billion for their raise last year, the largest IPO to date.
Anyway, Ant, which runs Alipay — a mobile payments app, quickly diversified beyond just that to add insurance, investments and the full slate, morphing into a super-app, quickly becoming indispensable to over a billion users. The company's meteoric rise is a harbinger of a new time, where digital natives, armed with global scale and data-first advantages are aggressively displacing the consumer business of banking entities.
Ant generated some $17.7 billion in revenue in 2019, up ~41% from the year before. Looking at the impact COVID has had on other digital financial services around the world, that growth will only accelerate going forward.
Takeaway: the IPO is another chip on the shoulders of Jack Ma. Also, it helps set the mood for Indian payment companies like PayTM and others who’re eyeing a run for next year, as investors get confidence in emerging market payments and fintech.
Tweet of the day —
What else are we snackin’ 🍿
💉 Advancing into the next phase - Phase III trials of the COVAXIN coronavirus vaccine will start in Lucknow and Gorakhpur from October. The Indian Council Of Medical Research is collaborating with Bharat Biotech for the development of the vaccine.
💰 Google-Jio at regulator’s doorstep - Tech giant Google has approached the competition commission of India to get a go ahead for its ₹33,737 crore investment in Jio for a 7.73%. According to CCI filing, Google will make the investment in Jio platforms through an international subsidiary.
🗼 Vodafone 1, GOI 0 - Vodafone has won an international arbitration case against the Indian government in a $2 billion tax dispute. The tribunal asked the government to stop seeking dues from the telco and also directed GOI to pay $5.47 million to the company as compensation for its legal costs. Ouch.
🙄 Remember cancel Netflix? - well it lasted barely a day. Reports suggest that the movement to cancel subscriptions over its handling of the movie “Cuties” lost wind quickly, with subscriber loss mostly flatlining in 2 weeks.
Hit that 💚 if you liked today’s issue.
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