Namaste, Sat Sri Akaal, and Salaam. 🫡

Happy morning, folks. 🙏

Today we’re diving into -
- Disney’s dream to offload their India biz,
- Ambani + Jio’s AirFiber launch,
- And Zomato’s rip-roaring growth.

Our read time today is 4 minutes and 43 seconds - faster than you can finish a plate of paneer momos at Mukherjee Nagar. 🥟

Let's dive in. 👇

Market Vibe Check

Disney hunts for India biz buyers. 🤔

TLDR -
- Disney India has seen their avg. revenues per user plunge to $0.59/month (record low)
- They’re bleeding subscribers and want to sell the business.
- Initial talks have started with PE firms, investment houses, and streaming giants - they even spoke to Ambani!

The last few months have been nothing but pain for Disney’s India unit.

- They lost streaming rights to the IPL (and cricket = religion in India)
- Over 15 million subs left their platform
- Their avg. revenue per user declined to an all-time low of just $0.59/month (compared to their global avg of $4.44/month)

Disney doesn’t wanna fight a losing battle, so they’re trying to cut losses and move on.

They’ve been hunting for buyers and have had strategic talks with family offices, PE firms, and even the big daddy Mukesh Ambani himself.

Ambani has been the biggest reason behind Disney’s struggles, because he grossly overpaid for IPL rights, then made it free for everyone to watch thru his OWN streaming app, JioCinema.

India is SUPER price sensitive, so a jolt like that was enough to bring Disney to it’s knees.

Monopoly power who?

Jio starts shaking up the telco market (again…) 😴

TLDR -
- Mukesh Ambani has spent over $25bn on his latest move of business chess: 5G for every Indian.
- He’ll be selling these little 5G dongles, which are the same size as your car keys.
- Will probably do wonders because of how easy, fast, and cheap it is.

Last year, Mukesh Ambani was preaching about how he would bring 5G to every Indian.

Today, it looks like he’s delivering on his promises - with the launch of Jio AirFiber.

Normal Wifi connections go thru a router. It’s a pretty ugly looking box with cables sticking out of the back.

But AirFiber is just like a dongle - so you can run a 5G internet connection off of an object the size of your car keys.

This is a game-changer in India because -
- it’s cheaper than a router
- it’s easier to use/service than a router
- it’s much faster than a router

Jio also doesn’t need to hire a team of technicians, engineers, and operators - they can literally sell this device out of a kirana (corner store).

Mukesh baba has invested over $25bn in this project so far - $11bn for the airwaves, $8bn for the towers, and $6bn+ for this AirFiber product.

Electric… ⚡

Zomato makes Dal street + Dalal street happy. 💸

Most startups that made lofty claims last year never delivered on them.

Zomato was one of the handful that actually did, and markets are rewarding them.

Shares have 2X’ed and then some more in the last few months, and it’s all because of a few key improvements in the dhandha.

They’re growing their margins on the core food delivery business while blitzing the market with the quick-commerce arm.

Zomato has also managed to attract and retain their highest-ticket customers with their Gold membership - over 30% of all orders placed on the platform come from the 2-3% of Gold users.

Food margins will expand to 5% gradually, and volumes will slowly start ticking up in Tier2-3 cities.

Killer stuff. 🍅

In other news… ☕

Zomato inches to a $11bn market cap after Instacart confidence boost (Inc42)

UAE sells USD-denominated bonds for the first time in 3 years (BBG)

Elon Musk thinks about making EVERYONE pay to use Twitter (TC)

Ford’s US+Canada workers go on strike (FT)

Canada points a finger at India over Khalistan drama (Mint)

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