Watchout Zoom 🧐
Edtech deals, digital healthcare, and angry gamers.
Hi 👋, Tanvi here.
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Build in 4 weeks 💪
Hope you had a relaxed Sunday and a great Independence Day.
Yesterday was a quiet news day. So we thought of using the opportunity to highlight YC’s latest 4-week building sprint. As part of the latest program, you can sign up to build a company solo or with a team for 4 weeks and be eligible for a $10K grant in the end based on your progress.
If you’ve been brewing an idea during the lockdown, this might be the best opportunity to give it a shot. Go give your buddies a call and hop on over to register. Here’s the link.
Now moving on to the day’s happenings real quick...
Will young gamers abandon Apple? 🍎
Apple’s bout with the future of gaming is putting the company at risk of losing its reputation with young buyers.
Just last week alone, Apple locked horns with 3 game projects back to back. First it took down cloud gaming services launched by Facebook and Microsoft in separate events. Then it took down Fortnite, a game that has over 350 million users worldwide and is almost a part of GenZ pop culture. All because their gaming apps did not adhere to the company’s app distribution standards.
While Apple’s actions seem justified to some, to avid gamers they only breed a negative sentiment, giving the impression that if you want to play games online, Apple’s devices are not the best option for you. You probably have to get an Android, or stick to Playstations and Xboxs.
In major markets like the US, Apple holds more than 80% market share among younger demographics in the smartphone market. And actions like these for the first time offer consumers a significant “pain-point” which could eventually drive them to replace their iPhones with Pixels or other devices. So far over the past decade there was no such hook that stuck but now a sizable hit on Apple’s profits could be brewing.
And if you know teenagers, you know that they do what their friends do. So will GenZ’s and Gen Alpha abandon Apple collectively? Regardless, the antitrust battle is worth watching and could quickly spiral into one of the most heated contests of the decade. Read more.
Malamaal edtech 📚
Capital inflows into India’s edtech show no signs of slowdown. Now Unacademy is reportedly finalising a deal to raise around $150 million from SoftBank, boosting the startup’s pre-money valuation to $1.3 billion, second only to Byju’s.
There has been no better time to raise in the edtech space and Unacademy’s phenomenal growth is a testament of that. The company claims to have garnered 200,000 paid subscribers by now, up nearly 120% since February, with revenues almost doubling each month when lockdowns were first enforced.
Also for Softbank, the fundraising will be a significant comeback. COVID had destroyed a lot of their flagship investments and the last major India deal happened when they invested in Lenskart in December 2019, almost a year ago.
Unacademy however had just picked up $110 million from Facebook and PE firm General Atlantic in February, at a valuation of $510 million.
FB goes after many markets in one shot 👀
Facebook is launching a feature that would allow small businesses, creators, educators and media publishers to conduct live events and then get paid directly over the platform.
The move is apparently part of FB’s strategy to give independent businesses more tools to adjust operations to the post COVID world. The company says it has already tested many paid events and so far the traction has been nothing short of amazing.
Early users have been businesses that use the platform to host expert talks, trivia events, podcast recordings, boxing matches, cooking classes, intimate meet-and-greets, fitness classes and more. Also, the company is testing the ability to host smaller, more interactive gatherings inside of Messenger Rooms.
The new feature is already available in 20 countries and the company has asked Apple to reduce its 30 per cent App Store tax or allow it to offer Facebook Pay so it could absorb all costs for businesses struggling during COVID-19.
Takeaway: With one move, Facebook is taking on the social commerce space, creator economy tools, digital events space and countless other markets that have found a temporary home at Zoom. The breadth of Facebook’s offerings only enhance the possible use cases here and FB could do some real damage in no time.
Digitizing India’s Healthcare 🏥
On the occasion of Independence Day, the PMO announced a digital health initiative that will work to build a database of health records in a comprehensive attempt to centralize the country's health information.
Under the National Digital Health Mission, all citizens will be given a unique health ID, will be able to access their digitised health records and will have access to a centralized registry of doctors and nationwide available health facilities. The health ID will be the final identifier of a person in the health system, having all history of medical conditions, diseases, drugs administered and other information associated with it in a centralized system.
The initiative will work in tandem with the Ayushman Bharat Insurance program that the government had pioneered in 2018.
Labs will be able to access data easily, doctors can look up past issues easily, etc. Also, sufficient data can be collected to speed up research and further make possible usage of frontier tech like AI and other data modeling tactics to mine anonymized information.
Bottomline: while the initiative is definitely laudable, privacy will be at the center of citizen’s concerns and it remains to be seen how the government guarantees that. But a centralized, protected, and anonymized database of records for the first time could drastically spur innovation in healthcare across the nation. Details on the government’s motivation to open access however are still elusive.
Tweet of the day -
What else are snackin’ 🍿
🤝 Essential goods partnership - Flipkrt has partnered with spiritmaker Diageo backed startup to deliver alcohol in two Indian cities. Post lockdowns, almost all Indian e-commerce players have made moves to enter and capture a piece of India’s $27 billion booze market.
✊ Gig workers strike - delivery executives working for Swiggy in Chennai have been on a strike since Thursday night, demanding the company to roll back the new wage policy. Staff alleges that new policies provide them only Rs 15 per order compared to the earlier Rs 35. WTF Swiggy?
💉 Sputnik V goes live - Russia has started production of the first batch of COVID-19 vaccines, named Sputnik V. International community of health experts is chastising Russia for not performing adequate tests, rushing the vaccine through the doors but many countries seem excited to purchase doses.
🚀 NASA-SpaceX ready for next flight - NASA and SpaceX have set a specific target date for Crew-1, which will carry astronauts Shannon Walker, Victor Glover, Mike Hopkins and Soichi Noguchi to the International Space Station, and will mark the first regular service mission of the privately made Dragon spacecraft.
👏 ICICI bank raises funds - Private bank ICICI has raised $2 billion in capital by placing almost 419 million shares with qualified institutions at 358 rupees a piece. The bank had also raised about 31 Billion rupees earlier by paring stakes in its publicly traded units after regulators forced banks to boost liquidity.
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