Namaste, Sat Sri Akaal, and Salaam. 🫡

Happy morning folks. Hope all izz well.

Today we’re diving into -
- Titan’s $300mn debt raise,
- Apple’s push to manufacture 25% of iPhones in India,
- And PhonePe’s wealth management dreams.

Our read time today is 4 minutes and 56 seconds - faster than Sherpal and Deopal finished 80 rotis…

Let's dive in. 👇

Market Vibe Check

Apple set on shifting 25% of all production to India. 📱

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 has 3Xed, from 2.5→7.5ish percent.

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.

This is called a “China + 1” strategy, and it’s an approach that a lot of major manufacturers are taking. They get to avail of the Indian government’s super-high subsidies, sell to the Indian market, and get lovely access to some of the biggest export hubs in the world.

Solid stuff… 🤩

PhonePe goes all out on their “share.market” service. 📈

TLDR -
- PhonePe is launching a stock market app.
- They spent $75mn on wealth-tech acquisitions last year - this is the outcome.
- Current USP seems to be cost - subsidized and market-leading trading fees for options.

India’s fintech king is pushing hard into the world of wealth management.

PhonePe just launched a stock market/mutual fund app called share.market.

Nothing too special here - its a classic investing app with ETFs, shares, options, etc.

But here is the interesting part.

The bet is on India’s financialization.

Currently, less than 3% of Indian household income goes toward stock markets.

In other places like the US/UK, over 30-35% of income is put into markets.

As that percentage of income going towards markets increases, folks are gonna be hunting for easy + seamless ways to securely invest their savings.

This space has recently started heating up -
- Jio Financial’s $300mn asset management venture with Blackrock
- Groww & Upstox’s multi-billion dollar cash piles
- Paytm’s new Paytm Money arm

As they say, follow the money…

Titan nabs $300mn in debt to fund Caratlane acquisition. 💎

TLDR -
- Caratlane had their business completely bought out for $560mn last month.
- Titan is fully closing the deal soon - they borrowed $300mn against the CL shares to pay for the acquisition.

Diamonds in the rough are still pretty expensive…

CaratLane started out as an humble online jewelry player with modest sales.

They got noticed by Titan in 2016, who bought 62% of their company at a $69 million valuation.

Titan decided to go omni-channel, and with their proven distribution network, CaratLane built out 223+ stores in the next few years.

This operational excellence paired with stellar products pushed them closer & closer toward becoming the “Amazon” of jewelry. Titan saw this crazy profitability, and bought the founders out for $560mn.

To fund this deal though, Titan has taken on a $300mn loan. They’ll pay most of it back thru their cash reserves, and have borrowed using their Caratlane shares as collateral.

Solid dealmaking and a big win for the jewelry biz.

In other news… ☕

WeWork legally goes bankrupt (BBG)

OpenAI launches it’s own “app store” after hitting 100m users (FT)

Lucid matches Tesla’s charging ports, big win for standardization (TC)

James Gorman to step down as Morgan Stanley CEO next year (BBG)

Adani kicks off with a $1.5bn Dharavi investment (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