Namaste, Sat Sri Akaal, and Salaam. 🫡

Happy morning folks. Hope life is good.

Today we’re diving into -
- Flipkart’s official Amazon-competitor launch,
- PocketFM’s bumper funding talks,
- And Dubai’s crazy property boom (partly Desi fueled).

Our read time today is 4 minutes and 53 seconds - faster than Bhupendra Jogi realised what the question was 💀

Let's dive in. 👇

Market Vibe Check

Flipkart goes live with their Amazon prime competitor. 🤩

TLDR -
- Flipkart has officially launched Amazon Prime-like product with free delivery, cashbacks, sales, etc.
- Their goal is to find users who impulse-buy a LOT and then retain them.
- They’ve been struggling a little due to Amazon’s dominance in T1 cities/metros - but this looks set to shake the market up.

Flipkart has long been the undisputed king of e-commerce in India, and they quickly realising that keeping the crown might be a difficult job.

The only way to build a generational e-com business is through 2 methods -
- bump up the quantity of users who buy from you (more orders, slim margins)
- bump up the quality of users who buy from you (higher avg. order values, fat margins)

Flipkart’s entire strategy now revolves around Option 2 - to attract and retain high-quality users with an Amazon Prime-like product.

It will have all the usual jazz -
- free one-day delivery
- 1-5% cashbacks
- access to “Prime Day” sales

But there’s still one key piece of the puzzle that Flipkart seems to be missing.

They’ve always been chasing customer choice - not high-ticket orders.

This is precisely why they’ve fallen behind Amazon in metro cities, since their experience is not as “convenient”.

Amazon can offer faster delivery, music & video, and easier returns. And since convenience is no less than a commodity for Young India, all of these make it an easier sell for a new customer.

It’s priced at INR 499 - brilliant for all the value that customers are getting.

Time will tell where this one goes. 🤔

PocketFM gears up to pick up $80-100mn more. 📻

TLDR -
- PocketFM just hit the $25mn ARR mark and are gearing up for a fundraise at a $750m-800mn valuation.
- Over 70% of their users come from Western markets/USA.
- Their strategy is different, since they invest millions into high-quality content creation for a long-term competitive advantage.

Desi khoon, but firangi shaunk…

It’s super difficult to sell the exact same product in both USA and India - but PocketFM is doing it and making millions.

They run a Spotify clone for podcasts/audiobooks, and it’s catching on like CRAZY in the West.

Less than 30% of their users come from India, despite their launch being desi and their headquarters being in Gurgaon.

A very underrated but crucial aspect to their business - they own the IP to the most interesting podcasts on their platform.

PocketFM spends crores perfecting their in-house content strategy and A/B testing the hell out of small things to perfect the user’s experience.

The result?

Something like a Netflix Original’s movie that they own the rights to, but can still earn from by leasing it out to film houses/apps that want to stream it.

Plus, the long-term content costs are FAR lower than if they had to pay a license fee every year.

They’re raising money at a $750mn valuation (currently $25mn/ARR) to build this business - essentially a content creation company run like a tech startup.

Crazy impressive.

Dubai bucks a slowdown in luxury real estate sales. 📈

Habibi… come to Dubai 🙈

Dubai's property market is on another ripper - highest number of homes sold for over the $10 million mark in Q3, while most other major property markets saw a big gap down.

The world's wealth is either moving to Dubai, or setting up a second home here.
- Rich Chinese are coming to get away from lockdowns
- Rich Russians are coming to escape war restrictions
- Rich Indians are coming to have a better life
- Rich Europeans are coming to leave the structural decline

All of this wealth acts like gravity - drawing in even more wealth - and pulls in all sorts of figures, with crazy amounts of cash.

Most of this money flows into real estate because Dubai keeps bucking difficult markets, and it’s also a quick & easy way to convert black money to white.

Crazy growth for a city that was born in the blink of an eye. 👁️

In other news… ☕

Amazon releases an AI-powered image generator (TC)

Charlie Munger passes away (FT)

Dubai Taxi gets a $41bn total subscription for a $315mn IPO (BBG)

Indian markets cross the value of India’s GDP (Mint)

Elliott grabs a $1bn stake in Phillips 66 (CNBC)

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