Namaste, Sat Sri Akaal, and Salaam. 🫡

Happy Monday, folks. Hope you had a brilliant weekend.

Shehzadon ki batting dekh kar World Cup hopes are still alive. 🙏

Today we’re diving into -
- Apple’s bade-bade sapne with Indian manufacturing,
- PhonePe’s attempt to grab Google’s market share,
- And DealShare’s deteriorating dhandha.

Our read time today is 4 minutes and 46 seconds - faster than Dadi whips up daal bati churma for Sunday lunch. 😴

Let's dive in. 👇

Market Vibe Check

Apple drops the game plan for the next few years. 🍎

TLDR -
- Apple wants to take it’s India production from $7bn to $40bn in 5 years.
- This is a big jump - the entire Indian electronics industry is only ~$140bn.
- Market is loving their products, Apple mkt share in India almost 3Xed, from 2.5→7.5ish percent.

California’s kombucha-guzzling tech bros → Chennai’s dosa-devouring annas…

Apple is really packing some power into their India expansion.

They’ve spoken with govt. about a plan to 5X their current production in the next 5 years.

Apple currently makes $7 billion of components in India per year… and they’re targeting a $40 billion mark.

This is a VERY big number - the entire Indian electronics industry is only $140 billion or so.

Tim Cook is making a very intentional change to Apple’s original itinerary by boosting production like crazy.

Factories have been set up all over -
- 300 acres in Karnataka for a R&D/mfg lab
- 60,000 pax facility near Bangalore
- 40 acres in Ranchi

Apple wants to use India as both a launchpad to rest of Asia and also sell to a fast-growing local market.

While overall Apple revenues have been declining over the last 9 months, they 3Xed their market share in India…

Solid hai. 🙈

PhonePe tries stepping on Google’s toes with a new App Store. 📲

TLDR -
- PhonePe is launching an “Indus App Store” for India.
- It’s meant to be more developer friendly, so no weird charges and commissions levied on everything.
- If devs boycott Google (which I doubt they will), then this is a multi-billion $ business.

Google/Apple hold a massive monopoly on the “app store” market - and developers HATE it.

You have to fork over 30% “commission” on in-app purchases, a fee when you publish your first app, and tons more in generally nonsensical charges.

PhonePe has seen this and raised the stakes - they' just launched an app store that -
- doesn’t charge any listing fees
- doesn’t levy a commission on in-app purchases
- has a flat-fee model after the first year

Plus, PhonePe has partnered with phonemakers to make distribution a breeze (since a lot of Indian phones have junk processing power) and localize the platform depending on region.

This is pretty crazy - PhonePe has been a fintech company for 100% of it’s lifespan.

They already have 450 million users active on their platform and are now using the power of distribution to 10X their dhandha.

Killer…

DealShare’s dhandha takes a massive blow. 🤔

Social-commerce unicorn DealShare just shut down it’s wholesale division - which was responsible for 50% of their business at one point.

3 months back, their investors ring-fenced funding from them - which is MBA language that translates to - “investors literally had to legally ask for their money back to shield themselves from further losses”.

At one point, DS had over 2,000 employees - and the last employee count was 620.

Crazy stuff.

In other news… ☕

Russia mints billions despite Western oil price caps (FT)

Twitter competitors Bluesky saw best day ever after Elon explored paywalling the platform (TC)

Brookfield scoops up $750 million of school buildings (BBG)

Rishi Sunak thinks about shortening $125 billion HS2 (BBG)

Akasa Air preps a $400 million fundraise (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