Happy Thursday!
There’s no stopping the Jio juggernaut. After it raised Rs 97,885.65 crore through eight transactions in seven weeks, Jio Platforms is said to be in talks with US-based TPG Capital. The private equity firm, known primarily for leveraged buyouts, is expected to be nearing a deal that might see it invest $1-1.2 billion in the holding company of India’s largest telecom operator.
Lining up investors
If a deal happens, TPG would join bulge-bracket American private equity peers KKR, Silver Lake and General Atlantic in picking up a stake in Reliance Industries’ digital unit. TPG is an investor in several top global technology disruptors such as Uber, Airbnb and SurveyMonkey.
With the latest investment from ADIA, which was announced last Friday, Jio Platforms is being valued at Rs 4.91 lakh crore, excluding debt and liabilities.
The telecom business has become RIL’s growth engine, helping—along with the group’s fast-growing retail business—to offset the decline in oil and petrochemicals, the legacy cash cows. Read more.
Catching up
With 265 million internet users, rural India is not only keeping up with cities in terms of the sheer number of netizens, it is also mirroring the time spent, frequency, share of female users and mode of access.
Why it matters
While urban India is close to reaching saturation levels with around 60% of the population having access to the internet, the headroom for growth in rural areas remains massive, potentially skewing the way online companies and developers view India as a market.
But even though internet usage might look similar on the surface, the activities which urban and rural users engage in online are different. The biggest surprise is social media, where the overall lower adoption of Facebook and WhatsApp in rural India keeps the usage index at just 60, but TikTok scores 166. Read more.
After more than two months under a nationwide lockdown which lulled many into a false sense of security, the return to offices is bringing with it a sense of anxiety and apprehension. Psychologist Geetanjali Kumar, owner of Aakar Counseling and Wellness Centre in Delhi, says there has been a near-doubling of queries (5-6 each day) from clients who are anxious about returning to work. Some, she says, border on paranoia or obsessive-compulsive disorder.
Strange new world
How safe is it to step out now? What if I pass on the virus to my family? What can I do to protect myself? These are the questions many are asking in the new normal, as the government reopens the economy amid rising cases of Covid-19 infections. Read more.
Renegotiating rentals
Top ride-hailing, food delivery and hospitality companies, as well as mid-stage startups, are renegotiating real estate deals, in a bid to slash costs by as much as a third as the Covid-19 pandemic hits revenues.
Oyo, Paytm, Ola, Swiggy, Zomato, Uber, among others, have reached out to builders to renegotiate pan-India rental agreements, renewal clauses, rent escalations. These companies are also toying with the idea of giving up a floor, consolidating offices, and shutting down regional divisions, among other measures, to reduce long-term fixed asset costs. Read more.
Postman, a Software as a Service (SaaS) startup which was valued at $350 million just a year ago, clocked a nearly six-fold jump in its valuation as it raised $150 million in its Series C funding round led by Insight Partners. The Bengaluru and San Francisco-based collaboration platform for managing, developing and testing application programme interface (APIs) counts Microsoft, Twitter, PayPal and DocuSign as customers.
Why it matters
This is one of the biggest jumps in valuation for an Indian startup. It has also catapulted the company into the growing Indian SaaS unicorn club comprising Freshworks, Druva and Icertis. India’s SaaS industry clocked $1.5 billion in revenues in 2019, and is expected to grow to $10 billion by 2025, controlling around 8% share of the global SaaS market from 2.6% currently, according to SaaSBOOMi, a community for SaaS companies in the country. Read more.
(Illustrations and graphics by Rahul Awasthi)
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