Week ends well
Couple raises, Coursera IPO, and big stuff from the week.
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Market summary: 📊
India reversed a bit on Friday, ending the week flat relative to where we started. US stocks had a mixed day with traditional companies rising, while tech continued to take a beating.
US:
S&P 500 - up 0.10%
Nasdaq 100 - down 0.89%
India:
Nifty 50 - down 0.95%
Sensex - down 0.95%
Let’s quickly run through a couple things for the day...
Hottest from the venture street 🔥
A quick D2C raise—Juicy Chemistry, a direct to consumer skin and personal care brand raised $6.3 million from Verlinvest, in one of the largest Series As raised to date in the segment in India
The bootstrapped company essentially sells self-branded certified organic products around face and hair care. Last year they made about ₹25 crores in annual revenues, which grew 300% aided by the pandemic led boom in digital consumption. Fresh funds will be utilized to widen product offerings, increase workforce, and enter new geographies.
Key takeaway: Indian retail cosmetics is a $13 billion market, set to grow at 15%+ rates through 2025. Digital forms a tiny percentage of the opportunity today, but with Nykaa and other leading brands driving broad consumer awareness, the opportunity for other smaller D2C labels to capitalize on this shift is massive.
While we’re on raises,
Icertis, one of the largest SaaS ventures to come out of India, raised a solid $80 million for its Series F round from B Capital, Premji Invest, and a bunch of others, almost tripling the company’s valuation to $2.8 billion.
Icertis offers a software platform that digitizes corporate contracts, making it easy to manage docs in one place, and to seamlessly run analytics on thousands of documents to mine insights. The company’s suite is one of the most popular tools in the category industrywide, and after Freshworks, the Pune and US HQ'd company is one of the most valued SaaS giants to come out of India.
Fresh funding will help bolster tech, drive sales operations, and widen its partner network, as well as fund global expansion into uncommon markets like Japan and Eastern Europe.
King of the pandemic...📚
The OG of edtech, Coursera, just filed its papers for an IPO on the back of a sea change in remote learning and mass upskilling during COVID.
The company which literally pioneered the concept of massive online open courses (or maybe NPTEL did) is still admirably growing revenues at the rate of ~60% each year, booking close to $300 million in revenues last year. Losses still stand at a sizable $66.8 million, but that’s because the company recently moved into a few interesting adjacent verticals, including for example the launch of “Coursera for Campuses”, an end-to-end SaaS based program management platform that allows universities to operate fully remote classes for students during COVID.
Anyway, in the recent months Skillsoft & Nerdy, two other US edtech companies that went public through the SPAC route have had an EPIC run post listing, which sets the mood right for Coursera. The bid should be out in a month or so.
That’s it with the new stuff, quick look at the hottest stuff from this week…
🎙️ Bytedance wants audio social—TikTok parent Bytedance is releasing a Clubhouse clone, looking to repeat its magic with the audio format. China recently banned Clubhouse, and a bunch of apps have come up tryna fill the gap in the aftermath. Moreover, Clubhouse may have been the one to open the doors on the audio social category, but real-time long-form discussions between a bunch of nerds is not the only way this game will be played. Expect plenty of innovation around the format from tech bellwethers.
💻 Devices are hot—the pandemic drove an upcycle in consumer device purchases, led by work from home and remote learning demand. Reliance is hoping to capitalize on the wave by launching a self made, low-priced 4G-enabled laptop targeted at heartland India. Production and launch is scheduled by the end of year, and the device will run on a customized Android OS and have most Jio apps preloaded. Ironically, a Chinese manufacturer will be making the devices.
🚕 Big dreams—Ola’s upcoming EV plant in the outskirts of Bengaluru is going to be the world’s largest 2-wheeler manufacturing facility, capable of churning out a bike every 2 minutes once its fully commissioned by the end of 2022. The facility will cost about $330 million, and will be built in under 12 weeks. Ola is ambitiously transforming itself into a completely vertically integrated transportation company, eyeing an entry into the $200 billion EV space in India.
📖 Tata makes a call—the management of Tata apparently made a pit stop by the offices of Justdial, the online classifieds company, exploring the potential for a partnership or an acquisition. The JD empire recently launched an online B2B wholesale marketplace JD Mart, which forms the crux of the talks as Tata harbors deep ambitions of a complete digital commerce led overhaul of its consumer empire. The news is still developing, but we think Tata is keen on acquiring access to the respectable base of 140 million or so merchants across India that JD serves on its platform, probably hoping to scale a b2b commerce marketplace. Long shot, but possible.
💪 Dukaan-tech’s next frontier—KhataBook disclosed plans of rolling out insurance and credit products later this year, as the Dukaan-tech platforms look to solidify their standing, upsell more services and lock merchants in via adjacent sticky products to fend off competition. The demand pull coming from merchants in favor of digitization is extremely strong too, who increasingly find themselves underserved by banks and traditional institutions. KhataBook reports some 8.5 million active users, and competes with Paytm, OkCredit, and a host of others.
⌚ Wearables are HOT—Pepsi owned sports drink maker Gatorade ventured into wearables, making a tiny patch that sticks to your skin and measures and analyzes your sweat to understand how your fitness levels are trending. It then connects to a smartphone app that’s capable of reading the data, and over time builds you a unique sweat profile. Consumers’ interest in understanding their own body’s operations is quickly becoming an intriguing theme that brands of all shapes and sizes are hopping on.
💰 Don’t sleep on Africa—Flutterwave, the Stripe of Africa, raised $170 million for its Series C, valuing the business at over a billion dollars. Flutterwave makes it easy for developers to embed the functionality of processing payments within a digital app via a bunch of APIs. They primarily operate in Nigeria and 11 other African countries, and to date have processed over 140 million transactions, with cumulative payment volumes of over $9 billion. Africa’s rapid digitization, exacerbated by COVID, will deliver one of the most digitally fertile regional economies the world has ever seen in the next 2 decades, and these businesses are going to be the $100B empires of the future.
🤯 Week in the IPOs—globally, this was a good week for the IPO markets. In India, Easy Trip Planners saw overwhelming demand for its raise, with the bid oversubscribed by nearly 160 times. The online travel and booking platform has consistently grown revenues 45%+, has solid profitability, and owns about 5% market share in the OTA game. Although COVID dented momentum, business is expected to pick pace in recovery. Then the Amazon of South Korea, Coupang, had a blockbuster listing with the markets setting a $110B market cap on the stock by the end of trading yesterday, making it one of the largest IPOs in the US after Alibaba. Finally, Roblox’s direct listing was a HUGE victory. Markets lapped up every last share they could find and more, slapping a $38 billion market cap on the company by end of day.
That’s it for today, have a good weekend everyone!
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