Namaste, Sat Sri Akaal, and Salaam. 🫡

Happy morning, folks. 🙏

Today we’re diving into -
- Vauld’s crypto crash fallout,
- PhysicsWallah's heavy focus on physical locations,
- And Paytm’s push on the gas.

Our read time today is 4 minutes and 56 seconds - faster than you can break into a Mysore masala dosa from Sagar Ratna. 🔥

Let's dive in. 👇

Market Vibe Check

Vauld’s CEO & board members say bye-bye. 👋

TLDR -
- Vauld got rid of their CEO and board members.
- Owe over $400m but only have $330m of assets.
- Set up a committee of creditors to help things wrap up quick.

Vauld is a crypto lending startup that went bankrupt last year.

The premise was simple -
- you buy crypto
- you lock it up with Vauld
- you earn 12-15% interest

Sounds amazing, but things went horribly wrong.

Vauld owes $402 million to creditors but only has around $330 million of assets.

And the $402 million they owe, over $360 million belongs to retail investors. 🤦

They’ve also been forced to kick their CEO out and bring in new board members to smooth things over.

Trouble started with 2022’s crypto crash, and got worse every day since.

India’s very own mini-FTX…

Big ed-techs decide to remove the tech part. 💀

TLDR -
- PhysicsWallah is building 30+ new physical coaching centers.
- Existing portfolio is 67 centers with over 150k students.
- Most other big ed-tech companies are making a hard-pivot into 100 ed, 0 tech.

PhysicsWallah is India’s sole profitable ed-tech unicorn - which means that they’re doing something right.

Instead of going ham on the tech side of things, they’re focusing only on the ed part.

PW will be opening 30+ new centers across India - adding to a total portfolio of 67 locations with 150k+ students.

But they’re not alone -
- Unacademy opened 40+ centers this year which collectively make $45m
- Vedantu announced a hard pivot to offline classes even though they cost more
- BYJU’s took out $200mn to open offline coaching centers (but God alone knows what’s happening with those guys)

All the numbers are largely irrelevant.

But this tells us about the psyche of education giants.

Their customers are NOT loving the online experience and are finding out that nothing beats pen-and-paper.

Mukherjee Nagar momo stalls are about to have a field day…

Paytm parties as Ant offloads their stake. 📈

TLDR -
- Paytm shares hit a 1-year high as their China exposure thinned.
- Regulators have closed doors for them left-right-center because of their Chinese backing.
- Looks like smooth sailing for now.

Indian regulators have been in a perpetual tussle with Paytm over their Chinese ownership.

Because of this Chinese shadow, the government -
_ rejected Paytm Payments’ application for a license
- stopped Paytm Wallet from onboarding new users
- held up their acquisition of Raheja Insurance

And there’s so much more.

But ever since the founder did a share-swap with Ant Financial, things are looking better.

Markets sent Paytm shares to a new 52-wk high since they will now have to deal with less bureaucratic hell and can spend more time on what matters.

All a regulator’s world.

In other news… ☕

China cuts trading taxes to boost markets (BBG)

Better.com slides 90% on the DAY of it’s IPO (TC)

Tiger Global fully exits from Zomato (Arc)

DLF gets ready to drop a $2bn Gurgaon project (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 ahead.

Lots of ❤️,

Team Cutting Chai