Namaste, Sat Sri Akaal, and Salaam. 🫡

Today we’re diving into -
- Reliance and Blackrock’s $300mn push into asset management
- Myntra’s growth rejig and cost cutting
- Ola Electric’s buzzing business plans.  

Our read time is 4 minutes and 33 seconds - faster than you can eat a plate of gol gappe. 🥵

Let's dive in. 👇

Market Vibe Check

Ambani and Blackrock build a $300mn war chest. 🤺

TLDR -
- Blackrock and Ambani are working on an asset management JV.
- They’re going splitskies - 50/50 - $150 million each.
- Both are betting big on the impending financialization of India.

The classic Indian dada-ji investment universe spans across two assets - gold and FDs.

But gone are those days.

Jio Financial Services and Blackrock are spending $300mn together to build a digital-first asset management offering.

Blackrock manages $10 trillion - and they’ve made billions by sitting on the sidelines and enabling OTHERS to invest.

That’s precisely the playbook they’re using in India.

They want to give retail investors access to markets from small ticket sizes with a risk cap - and print tons of ₹₹₹ while doing so.

As of today, only 3% of Indian household income goes to stock markets.

That number is gonna go nowhere but up - which is wild when you consider that other (albeit more developed) countries such as the US and UK have 35-40% of income going toward markets in some way or the other.

Money moves. 💸

Ola Electric CEO drops the details on their IPO plans. 🤫

TLDR -
- E-scooters are facing BUMPER demand - so IPO might come sooner than expected.
- E-bike coming in 3 months, E-car coming next year.
- Coming off the heels of their 2019 tie-up with Microsoft to market their Office & Azure cloud services.

Bijlee bijlee is not only the coolest Punjabi song ever - it’s the driving force behind Ola Electric’s renewed domination appetite.

Ola-E opened their doors in 2021 - used rock bottom to build themselves up.

They meant to go public in 6 years. but the momentum shows that they can do it in 3.

Ola-E has 45% of the market (pretty impressive for a “newbie”) along with tons more interesting stuff in the pipeline.

The most notable - a 115 acre battery manufacturing plant north of Chennai.

Electrifying. ⚡

Myntra shifts growth gears. ⚙️

TLDR -
- Biiiig internal restructuring - with ~75 job cuts otw.
- Complete overhaul of strategy with a greater focus on private label brands.
- Very odd too, because just 2 years back private label took a backseat.

The online fashion world is killer.

Cutthroat competition, slim margins, and high churn.

Myntra has been stumbling a little bit - here is their plan to catch up again.

They’re gonna be
- overhauling supply chains (more lean + efficient)
- putting a greater focus on their private label brands
- onboarding MORE D2C names

Private label makes them a LOT more money - margins can be up to 15% higher if they sell their own stuff as opposed to selling for others.

This kinda stuff works because they need more proven bets and less experimental ones.

The current market is 65% Myntra, and 35% everyone else.

So if they wanna keep the upper hand, they’ve gotta be generating the profits to splash on growth.

Sehwag jaise dod ke Dravid jaise nahi tik sakte =)

In other news… ☕

Meta reports a 11% revenue growth with a big metaverse fail (TC)

US Fed raises rates to 5.5% - highest in 20 years (BBG)

Wall Street’s biggest high-frequency-traders see income slide 30% (FT)

Amazon chops up their grocery division (BBG)

Samsung releases more foldable phones… to no one’s excitement. (FT)

And that’s the tea the chai for today.

Thanks for reading, and we hope you enjoyed it.

Lots of ❤️,

Team CC