Bullets

India’s largest omnichannel eyewear company, Lenskart, has signed an agreement with ADIA to raise $500 million. Abu Dhabi Investment Authority is now the largest shareholder of Lenskart, with a 10% stake. 

Lenskart has been raising funding to improve its footing in international markets since last year. This agreement was part of the secondary fundraising that allowed Lenskart to maintain its valuation of $4.5 billion. 

This fund would facilitate Lenskart’s presence in the Middle East & Southeast Asian markets.

Foxconn is planning to set up a $200 million manufacturing plant in Telangana as it has won the contract rights to manufacture Apple's AirPods in India. Apple has recently been trying to shift its dependency on China. Foxconn intends to capitalise on this shift by increasing its footprint in India.

This is the first instance of Foxconn winning the contract to manufacture a non-iPhone Apple product.

This change could be beneficial for Indian customers and manufacturers of Apple products alike.

Shaking the workforce of Meta, CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced the plan to let go of 10,000 employees in April 2023. A thorough restructuring is ongoing to flatten the management.

Meta has labelled 2023 as the “Year of Efficiency” and is thus going to come forward with ample structure changes. Facebook founder posts mentioned the positive effect of this step towards increasing productivity.

How Meta’s new era will affect its employees, in the long run, is hard to predict.

India's largest lending bank SBI has decided to increase its interest rate by 70 basis points, or 0.7%. This sets its current benchmark prime lending rate (BPLR) and base rate to 14.85% and 10.10%, respectively.

The Marginal Cost of Funds Based Lending Rate (MCLR) has remained the same, however, following its final hike on February 15, 2023, by 0.1%.

The rate hikes will be applicable from 15th March 2023.

Indian stock market indices, Sensex and Nifty, have hit their lowest points in 365 days, dropping below the 60,000 and 17,200 points marks, respectively. Over the last year, the indices fell by 5.12% and 6.06%, respectively.

These lows can be a result of various factors, such as stricter monetary policies to reduce the excess money supply generated during the pandemic and the exit of foreign institutional investors from domestic markets.

The real question is, "Is time for "discount shopping" here?"

After the financial crisis & staff sacking, the car repair startup GoMechanic seems ready for a takeover. The acquirer is going to be the infamous used-car company CarTrade.

As per inside sources, GoMechanic has been valued at about $30 million, which is around ₹245 crore. The startup was valued at ₹285 crore before the revelation of book cooking by co-founder Amit Bhasin.

Whether this acquisition is the crack of dawn the startup needs is yet to be seen!

The Adani Group wants to raise funds by selling around 4.5% of its stake in Ambuja Cements. Based on reports so far, the deal is estimated to be worth around ₹3,380 crore.

Adani Group declared its acquisition of Ambuja and ACC Cements in May of 2022 and completed the deal by September of the same year. The value of this acquisition stood at $10.5 billion, out of which $1.1 billion was raised by pledging shares of various listed Adani entities.

Reliance is looking to launch Tira, its beauty and makeup brand, through offline stores soon, starting with Mumbai. Currently, the business operates through an e-commerce platform open only to Reliance employees.

Reliance has been strategically investing in the beauty industry through companies like Naturals Salon & Spa and Insight Cosmetics. Reliance has also been looking to acquire Indian rights to LVMH's Sephora.

Are Nykaa's days of beauty coming to an end as makeup becomes a "cash burn and takeover" game?

Renowned as the world's most valuable edtech startup, Byju's is now looking to raise $250 million through convertible notes. This move intends to circumvent the due diligence funding hurdles faced by the parent company (Byju's).

The notes will be issued through Aakash, which can be converted to equity at a 20% discount to the units' initial listing price.

Byju's is also currently looking to rework a $1.2 billion debt as the startup remains loss-making and struggles with obligatory payments.

Kitchens@, a VC-backed cloud kitchen startup, has recently acquired Swiggy's cloud kitchen arm, Access.

Junaiz Kizhakkayil, CEO of Kitchens@, said, “The addition of Swiggy’s Access kitchens will bolster the reach and operations of Kitchens@'s in four cities across 52 locations and 700+ kitchens, providing customers with more convenient and efficient food delivery options”.

The sale will be a part of a swap deal between Swiggy and Kitchens@ as Swiggy looks to trim verticals amidst reported losses of ₹3,628 crore.

SBI may withdraw its stake in Yes Bank as its lock-in period ends on March 13. While SBI had initially acquired a 49% stake in Yes Bank, it has reduced its holding over time, reaching 26.14% by December.

The lock-in period was put in place by the RBI under a restructuring scheme which included ICICI Bank, Kotak Mahindra Bank, Axis Bank, IDFC First Bank and HDFC Bank.

Yes Bank shares have been falling since the exposure of this information.

Japanese investment firm SoftBank is looking to dump 3.4% of its stake worth ₹600 crore in the logistics and delivery startup, Delhivery. Based on a report on ET, the Japanese holding company may even sell a larger section if a demand for the same exists.

This will be the second sale by international stakeholders, as last week saw American investment fund Tiger Global exit Delhivery with a ₹414 crore open market sale.

So, is the startup fever dying or dead?

Reliance Industries has launched True 5G services in Jammu and Kashmir. Jammu and Srinagar will be 2 of the 25 additional cities in 12 states to receive True 5G. Citizens of these geographies will access the Jio welcome offer, with unlimited data at over 1 Gbps.

A Jio spokesperson with The Print could be quoted saying, "Jio has provided employment to more than 36,000 people directly and indirectly in Jammu and Kashmir."

For once, J&K is not being left behind.

The Indian aviation sector seems to be gearing for a take off as major companies in the industry reshape their businesses. With Air India and Indigo increasing their fleet size, low-cost flier SpiceJet is reportedly in the talks with Carlyle Aviation Partners to restructure its debt.

The value of the debt being restructured stands at $100 million and be achieved by issuing fresh equity shares worth ₹244.28 crore to Carlyle. The restructure will also get SpiceJet access to new funding.

Jack Ma backed Ant Group, and Japanese holding company SoftBank are looking to liquidate their stake in Paytm.

According to a report by ET, Ant & SoftBank had previously approached Bharti Group's founder Sunil Mittal to buy their stakes. The aforementioned deal never went through, and the East-Asian companies are looking to gradually offload their stakes in a block sale to the public markets.

Making hot-fixes to already adjusted profits will only go so far, I suppose.

Joe Biden has nominated Ajay Banga, ex-CEO of Mastercard, to be the next president of World Bank. Banga will be the first person of Indian-origin to hold this position.

The US President president elected Banga because the former believes that the latter is "uniquely equipped" and had critical experience mobilising "public-private resources to tackle the most urgent challenges of our time, including climate change".

A truly proud moment for India as another one of its children upstages the country's name.

The RBI's Monetary Policy Committee announced a 25-basis-point increase in the repo rate to 6.50% during its meeting on February 6-8, citing persistent inflationary pressures. The RBI aims for 4% inflation with a tolerance band of 2-6%, and the recent surge in inflation was largely influenced by cereal prices. The minutes also highlighted the need to remain disinflationary until inflation is returned to target, and to safeguard the central bank's credibility in battling inflation. The hike was necessary to control inflation, despite concerns over its impact on economic growth.

Xbox, Microsoft's game division, has begun making strides towards closing the acquisition deal of California-based video game company Activision Blizzard. The deal is reported to be an all-cash deal worth $68.7 billion.

The acquisition faces a major hurdle through Xbox's direct competitor Sony. The Playstation maker refutes the deal, stating that the nature of the deal is anti-competetive and would negatively affect interests of gamers globally.

Microsoft is reportedly entering long-term cloud gaming deals with gaming giants Nvidia and Nintendo.

According to an MoU entered by the businesses on Monday, Tata Motors will provide 25,000 X-Pres-T EVs to Uber. The order size makes it the largest deal in the country.

Uber will act as an intermediary, helping medium to large sized fleet owners to acquire these new vehicles with the help of financiers, and work at getting charging points available at convenient points for ride partners.

With the Delhi scooter ban, suppose ride-share services have to look for an alternative.

Meta Platforms has reportedly started testing a subscription system in a pilot phase beginning with Australia and New Zealand. The subscription will be called "Meta Verified" and will cost $11.99 for the web version and $14.99 for Apple's iOS and Android.

The verification will use government IDs and provide users with a blue badge, will be provided in a bundle for both Facebook and Instagram and will reportedly provide extra protection against impersonation.

I guess Subscription is the new META.