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A High Court in Singapore has granted permission to Pine Labs to merge its local unit with its India unit and transfer assets and properties, paving way for the merchant commerce startup to shift domicile to India.
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Airtel, India’s second largest wireless operator, believes an industry-wide tariff hike is needed, and that it is weighing taking the lead. However, if competition doesn’t follow, then it would be a challenge, the management said in the analyst call. Hence the Bharti management continues to be on the “wait and watch mode” for right timing.
More takeaways from the conference call:
- Every time there is a tariff increase in the telecom industry, a modest SIM consolidation happens, but the upside benefit of repair is much greater, according to management. ARPUs (Average Revenue Per User) will not likely rise from Rs200 to 300 in one shot but over a couple of rounds.
- Bharti Airtel would continue its network rollout of an additional 25,000 sites in the coming quarters. The company expects moderation in consolidated capital expenditure from FY24 levels.
- Management stated that capital will continue to be allocated in transport infrastructure, and the company will continue to invest in its enterprise and data center business. While wireless radio-side investments will moderate, the homes segment will continue to receive a step up in investment. The company is also exploring potential bolt-on acquisitions in the B2B area.
- Bharti Airtel’s Fixed Wireless Access (FWA) service is currently available in 25 cities, and the company is looking to streamline customer journeys, aiming to be at scale in the coming 8 weeks. Management re-emphasized that FWA (using standalone mode on 5G) would only complement Fiber-to-the-Home (FTTH) services, with a focus on areas with weak fiber connectivity.
- 5G device shipments continue to grow steadily, and Bharti Airtel is gaining a fair share, which is reflected in the growing 5G subscriber base. As of March 2024, Bharti’s 5G base stood at 72 million, growing at a rate of 2-2.5 million per month. For the homes business, management said that the top 60 million homes contribute around 35% of industry revenues, and of these, broadband penetration is over 40 million. To capture this opportunity, Bharti Airtel’s strategy continues to be expanding fiber presence, driving penetration of converged offers, building stickiness by leveraging digital targeting capabilities, and leveraging FWA. Year-on-year increase in smartphone shipments, large-scale network rollout in rural areas, and network experience efforts have been the major factors contributing to Bharti Airtel’s benefits of net subscriber additions and lower churn rates.
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Sea’s Garena is scrambling to relaunch its popular mobile title Free Fire in India, more than eight months after the launch party in the South Asian market.
Forrest Li Xiaodong, Founder, Chairman and CEO of Sea, told analysts on the call Wednesday that his firm was working with stakeholders in India for the relaunch.
Garena, the gaming unit of Sea, last year announced plans to relaunch Free Fire in India, marking a return more than a year and a half after the title was banned by New Delhi over national security concerns.
The firm — which has partnered with Yotta, controlled by the local giant Hiranandani, for cloud and other storage needs of local users’ data in the country — initially said it will release the title in India on September 5 (2023). The subpar communication from the firm has already angered many gamers and entrepreneurs in the country.
Here’s what Li Xiaodong said Tuesday:
For Free Fire relaunch in India, at this moment, we are actively working with order — like stakeholders, including like the regulators, the potential local partners, right? And to figure out what is the best plan to relaunch Free Fire in India. And well, if that is successful, I think that will be a meaningful potential upside in terms of the users and the bookings considering India is a very, very big market. And — but just to clarify, at this moment for our outlook for the rest of the year in terms of the — our like a double-digit growth, right? And this is not taking into the consideration of the relaunch of the India. So that’s basically the — make it to the — basically, when we come out with guidance and outlook based on the current business, what we have seen for the existing kind of the trend of our current market for Free Fire.
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Zomato repored consolidated adjusted revenues of $460 million in its fourth-quarter results, a 59.3% increase year-on-year. The company’s adjusted EBITDA stood at Rs1.94 billion, while profit after tax (PAT) was Rs1.75 billion ($20.96 million), surpassing market estimates.
Despite a slight decline in food delivery gross order value (GOV), Zomato’s core business remained in line with expectations, driven by order growth and higher average order values. The company’s quick commerce segment surprised positively, with a GOV of Rs40.3 billion and a narrowing adjusted EBITDA loss of Rs0.37 billion. Zomato also proposed a new employee stock ownership plan pool, representing approximately 2% of its diluted share capital. The company aims to expand its QC store count to 1,000 by March 2025, targeting steady-state margins of 4-5% in the segment.
Goldman Sachs said in a report: “Zomato’s intent to almost double quick commerce store count in FY25 came as a surprise, and we believe the range of GOV growth outcomes for Blinkit remains large.”
Morgan Stanley: “With another quarter of steady performance across businesses, Zomato continues to execute well. Quick Commerce (QC) business has proven its relevance with use cases expanding beyond food and the company’s aggressive expansion plans. Zomato has potential to double its consolidated GOV over the next 3 years (F24-27e) and improve its adj EBITDA margins from 0.8% in F24 to 5.1% in F27. We see strong levers to support margin improvement across businesses (ad sales/platform fee in food delivery, improved product mix, take rates, platform fee and operating leverage in QC). On a growth adjusted basis, EV/adj EBITDA to EBITDA CAGR is ~1.1x (F27 EV/adj EBITDA to F27-29 CAGR of 30%+) which is comparable or even lower than some of the trading peers in restaurant industry/India internet names.”
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Quick commerce platforms in India are rapidly expanding their offerings, venturing into new categories to meet the evolving needs of consumers. Electronics and appliances have seen significant growth on QC platforms, with offerings ranging from mobile accessories to larger appliances like fans, coolers, and coffee makers.
Zomato-owned Blinkit, the leading QC player, even offered the iPhone 15 within 10 minutes of its launch, reflecting growing consumer trust in the category. Festivals and sports events have also found a place in quick commerce. Consumers can now purchase items like rakhis, gold and silver coins, and team merchandise to celebrate various occasions.
QC platforms are adapting to cultural nuances and meeting time-sensitive demands during festive seasons and major sporting events like the Cricket World Cup and IPL. Last-minute gift shopping category is also making inroads with QC, with the ability to deliver bouquets, chocolates, and personalized items within minutes.
Fashion, despite its complexities, is also being explored by QC platforms, offering a curated range of apparel in limited styles and colors. Children’s categories, including stationery, toys, and gaming consoles, have also been embraced by QC, catering to the needs of a younger audience. With innovative offerings like 10-minute printouts and the ability to deliver pizza faster than traditional pizza chains, QC is redefining convenience for Indian consumers, Jefferies wrote in a recent note.
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Flipkart plans to shift its domicile to India from Singapore and could make a move within months, ET reported Monday.
A growing number of Indian startups are working to relocate their overseas holding entities to India to align with evolving local regulations and to pursue domestic stock listings. Investment app Groww announced last week that it had shifted its domicile to India recently.
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Indian billionaire Bhavish Aggarwal is offering developers in his home country a full year of free cloud services to abandon Azure, escalating a feud with Microsoft over alleged censorship on its LinkedIn platform.
Aggarwal, who has founded three unicorn startups including ride-hailing provider Ola, said the offer from his AI venture Krutrim would be open “in perpetuity.” The 38-year-old made the pledge Saturday after accusing Microsoft’s LinkedIn of deleting his posts criticizing the professional networking site and its AI.
“The pronouns issue I wrote about is a woke political ideology of entitlement which doesn’t belong in India. I wouldn’t have waded into this debate but clearly Linkedin has presumed Indians need to have pronouns in our life, and that we can’t criticise it” wrote Aggarwal.
“They will bully us into agreeing with them or cancel us out. And if they can do this to me, I’m sure the average user stands no chance. As a founder and CEO, this western DEI system has a major impact on my business as it grows an entitlement mindset in our professional lives and I will fight it.”
The move marks a sharp reversal for Aggarwal and Microsoft. The two announced the Indian startup’s move to Azure to much fanfare in 2017. Aggarwal didn’t say what all cloud offerings Krutrim is offering, and it’s unclear how reliable they are.
India, a vital overseas market for U.S. tech giants, boasts a user base of over 500 million and a vast pool of skilled developers. The South Asian nation has shifted its focus in recent years on developing its own technology infrastructure to reduce dependence on foreign countries. This shift has been accompanied by policies prioritizing the rights and interests of Indian citizens, signaling a growing desire for technological self-sufficiency and data sovereignty.
Aggarwal also pledged Saturday to work with the developer community to build an open and digital public infrastructure for social media, similar to the nation’s popular payments rail UPI and biometric authentication system Aadhaar.
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What is the ideal job to outsource to artificial intelligence? Today’s AIs, in particular the Chatgpt-like generative sort, have a leaky memory, cannot handle physical objects and are worse than humans at interacting with humans. Where they excel is in manipulating numbers and symbols, especially within well-defined tasks such as writing bits of computer code. This happens to be the forte of giant existing outsourcing businesses — India’s information-technology companies. Seven of them, including the two biggest, Tata Consultancy Services and Infosys, collectively laid off 75,000 employees last year. The firms say this reduction, equivalent to about 4% of their combined workforce, has nothing to do with AI and reflects the broader slowdown in the tech sector. In reality, they say, AI is an opportunity, not a threat.
Business services are critical to India’s economy. The sector employs 5m people, or less than 1% of Indian workers, but contributes 7% of GDP and nearly a quarter of total exports. Simple services such as call centres account for a fifth of those foreign revenues. Three-fifths are generated by it services such as moving data to the computing cloud. The rest comes from sophisticated processes tailored for individual clients. Capital Economics, a research firm, calculates that an extreme case, in which AI wiped out the industry entirely and the resources were not reallocated, would knock nearly one percentage point off annual GDP growth over the next decade in India. In a likelier scenario of “a slow demise,” the country would grow 0.3-0.4 percentage points less fast. The simplest jobs are the most vulnerable.
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Go Digit, an Indian general insurance startup backed by Fairfax, is set to launch its $313 million initial public offering next week at a valuation of $3 billion. The startup has announced a price range of Rs 258-272 on Friday, marking a discount of up to 25% compared to its previous private-market valuation. Go Digit has also downsized its issue by more than 40%, seeking to raise primary capital of Rs 1,125 crore.
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Jaspreet Kalra, reporting for Reuters:
India will again delay caps on market share for a popular digital payments method, two sources told Reuters, benefiting Google Pay and Walmart-backed PhonePe as the authorities prioritise growth over concerns about market concentration.
The National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), the quasi-regulator, will extend by as much as two years a year-end deadline to cap at 30% the market share of any company processing payments via the Unified Payment Interface (UPI), the sources with direct knowledge of the matter told Reuters.
The NPCI had initially planned to enforce the market share cap in January 2021, but postponed the deadline to January 1, 2025. TechCrunch had previously reported that the regulator was moving towards extending the deadline further after concluding that there is no practical solution to address the issue.
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Groww, an Indian investment app, has become one of the first startups from the country to shift its domicile back to India from the U.S., signaling a broader trend among the local startup community.
The Bengaluru-headquartered startup, which allows consumers to buy shares and mutual funds, made the transition in March, its co-founder and chief executive, Lalit Keshre, wrote in a post on X.
A growing number of Indian startups, particularly in the fintech sector, are preparing to relocate their overseas holding entities to India in a bid to align with evolving local regulations, and to pursue domestic stock listings.
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Oyo, the Indian budget-hotel chain startup, is negotiating with investors to raise a new round of funding that could cut the Indian firm’s valuation to $3 billion or lower, three sources familiar with the matter told TechCrunch.
The startup is engaging with investors, including Malaysia’s sovereign wealth fund Khazanah, for the new funding, the sources said, requesting anonymity as the matter is private. The new funding round is likely to see some secondary transactions as well that will value the startup at as low as $2.5 billion, the sources added.
The proposed terms, if they materialize, would represent a steep drop from the peak valuation of $10 billion at which Oyo raised a funding round in 2019. A valuation of $3 billion or less would also be lower than the amount of capital Oyo has raised against equity and in debt over the years.
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According to data analyzed by Morgan Stanley and Pitchbook, the number of active venture capital firms worldwide surged from 2014 levels, more than doubling by 2021, before sharply contracting to below 2014 figures in a stunning reversal. (No public link to the report as it was sent to Morgan Stanley clients.)