Namaste, Sat Sri Akaal, and Salaam. 🫡

Happy morning, folks!

Today we’re diving into -
- Ambani’s push to turn Jio Financials into a lending giant,
- CRED’s second try at the wealth management game,
- And, Zomato’s foray into B2B logistics.

Our read time today is 4 minutes and 51 seconds - faster than Zepto delivers doodh and dhaniya in the morning. 🔥

Let's dive in. 👇

Market Vibe Check

Jio Financial starts to chart it’s path. 🚢

TLDR -
- Jio Financials just launched a personal + consumer durable loan product.
- They have a user-base of 450 million people who can be cross-sold anything with targeted ads.
- They’ve also managed to get a UPI license… sign of things to come?

After a $20 billion split, Jio Financials is here with it’s first dhamaka.

They’ve introduced a personal loan product and a consumer durable loan product.

The consumer durables product is super interesting - offering short-term, high interest rate loans to families who want to buy appliances like TVs and washing machines.

Bajaj Finance used this same strategy to scale their business quickly and cross-sell other financial products depending on credit history.

But here’s the kicker: Jio already has a user base of 450 million across the India - 450 million people which can be cross-sold a fintech product at the flick of a switch.

And that’s literally what happened, Jio’s new loan products are now available on the Jio app, almost overnight.

JioFS also has a license to use UPI (India’s real-time payments system) and has data on the telco transaction history of all their clients.

Data like that lets them sell targeted financial products to every type of consumer.

Scale is an INSANE thing… 🤯

Cred tries taking another dip into wealth management. 💸

TLDR -
- CRED is trying to buy out WealthTech platform Kuvera.
- Kuvera offers US stock investing, and they spent 10Rs to earn 1Rs last year.
- Kunal Shah cwants to turn CRED profitable by cross-selling different targeted financial products to his premium customer base.

Last year, CRED tried to buy out passive investing platform Smallcase.

However, (as with most things in life) there was a disagreement over the price tag, so the deal fell through.

CRED’s been itching for a chance to enter the wealth management game again, and they’re gonna do it by buying out Kuvera - a wealth-tech platform.

Kuvera is a startup that offers US stock investing, tax planning advice, and joint family investments.

It’s also previously raised money at a $100m+ valuation. 🙈

Last year, they had a top-line revenue of Rs 3.5 Cr, with losses of Rs 35 Cr. In other words, they spent ten bucks to earn one.

CRED knows that Kuvera won’t be able to sustain a loss-making business for too long, and is probably hoping to offer the founders/investors a quick exit.

They want to monetise their entire existing customer base (which is relatively premium!), and that solely depends on their ability to cross-sell more targeted financial products.

Killer stuff. 📈

Zomato goes hard into B2B. 🚂

TLDR -
- Zomato just piloted it’s B2B logistics service - Xtreme.
- They handle last-mile delivery, which was normally outsourced to 3rd parties.
- They’re handing it out at a 10-15% discount to market too.

When you order your ice cream from Zomato, the guy who drops the order off is often NOT a Zomato employee.

Even though he's wearing a Zomato shirt, he works for a "third-party-logistics" (3PL) company.

Zomato pays the 3PL to handle the logistical side of food delivery -
- getting the delivery guy to the restaurant
- making sure his bike works well and goes fast
- ensuring that your choco chip ice cream reaches you in under 25 mins

As you can guess, this is pretty expensive over time.

So Zomato is gonna handle it themselves, and also do it for other people.

The last mile is the MOST important and most expensive part of the entire delivery process.

Zomato is handing this out at a price of INR 10-15 per km - which undercuts the rest of the market by ~10-12%. (idk the exact numbers, but hey, I'm not an exec at a delivery company)

They'll be burning some money at the start, but scale will probably take some good care of their margins.

In other news… ☕

Ray Dalio’s Bridgewater makes itself a second home in the UAE (BBG)

Yeezy sales come in better than expected and save Adidas $450mn (FT)

Twitter traffic, activity, and engagement are DOWN 1 year post-acquisition (TC)

India cuts a windfall tax on crude. (Mint)

Greta Thunberg gets arrested (BBG)

And that’s the tea the chai for today.

Thanks for reading, and we hope you enjoyed it. Have a mauj-masti filled day.

Lots of ❤️,

Team Cutting Chai