Namaste, Sat Sri Akaal, and Salaam. 🫡

Hope you all had a fantastic weekend of partying after the boys in blue won their first world cup in over a decade. All hope genuinely seemed lost after the 30 in 30 mark, but you can never discount the Indian cricket team.

Today we’re diving into -
- Flipkart’s hot new payments super-app,
- Ola Electric’s hot new IPO,
- and Adani Green’s massive spending spree.

Our read time is 4 minutes and 58 seconds - faster than the Bumrah express sent South Africa’s off stumps flying… 🏏

Let's dive in. 👇

Market Vibe Check

Flipkart debuts their new payments app - Super. 🔥

TLDR -
- Flipkart raised $1 billion this year to launch their payments app Super.
- They want to woo users by offering ‘real-money’ cashback, not silly made-up points.
- End game is to expand into secured cards, credit cards, and lending.

In 2022, Flipkart and PhonePe completed an ‘internal’ divorce - both companies decided to fully separate from each other.

This split-up marked Flipkart’s exit from the fintech market, and they explicitly mentioned that they had no plans to re-enter.

But just 3 months back, Flipkart went on a $1 billion funding spree from American mammoths Google and Walmart - all with the goal of building a ‘war chest’ of sorts to go ham in the fintech world again.

After a lot of legal back-and-forth, a lot of time at the drawing board, and a lot of late nights put in by developers, Flipkart is back at it with their newest fintech offering - a payments app called Super.money.

Current payment apps which exist on the UPI network are broken - most of them promise cashback and rewards, but dole them out in the form of relatively useless in-app points, and this is where Super is trying to win.

They’re trying to woo customers with real cashback and real-money incentives, and an uncluttered, intuitive UX.

Flipkart also understands that handing out rewards is a pretty futile game, and that the real money will be made in lending.

They’ve partnered up with folks who have fat stacks of cash, such as Axis Bank, Credit Saison, and DMI Finance to offer secured cards along with short-term financing for any purchases that users want to make.

A very cluttered, but doubly more interesting market.

Ola Electric gets the nod to head for IPO. 🛴

TLDR -
- Ola Electric just filed their IPO papers, with a $8bn valuation target.
- They’re gonna raise $210mn, with the founder pocketing $100mn of this if all goes well.
- Ola-E will be spending close to $400mn post-IPO to beef up their business.

EV investors across the world have gotten an early Christmas present courtesy Ola Electric, who just got the nod for IPO from regulator SEBI.

They’re on the hunt for ~$210 million in fresh cash against a valuation of $8-8.5 billion.

This is decently optimistic, when you consider the fact that their (much bigger) competitors TVS and Hero Motocorp have market caps of $11.2bn and $9.4bn respectively.

$200mn of the $210mn raise is gonna be earmarked for some CRAZY R&D moves. They’re combining this with their existing cash pool and spending heavy -
- $204mn for a fresh battery plant and the initial operating expenses
- $100mn to repay debt lol
- $30mn on improved charging infrastructure pan-India
- $12mn on more retail stores and physical presence (because jo dikhta, woh bikta)

Interesting point- more than half the shares being sold in this fundraise belong to the founder, Bhavish Aggarwal.

If Ola does manage to sell $210mn of shares, he’s gonna pocket $100mn in cash. Not a bad payoff.

Adani Green goes ham on infrastructure spending. 💸

TLDR -
- Adani-owned Ambuja Cement is spending $750m on renewable energy projects to hit a 1000MW mark.
- This is good news, since Adani’s renewable businesses are usually the worst in terms of debt/growth/profits.
- Brilliant consolidation and turnaround in the general business…

Adani-owned and controlled Ambuja Cement is gonna be splashing $750mn on a bunch of renewable energy projects to generate 1000MW of power and hit their internal net-zero goals.

This is reassuring, since Adani’s own ‘Green’ arm has always been the standout amongst all group companies for the sheer amount of debt on it’s balance sheet.

Adani Green clocked an 87% rise in energy sales and is pushing forward with a plan to build the world’s largest renewable energy cluster in Khavda, Gujarat.

Renewable energy has a very high capital expense (startup costs) but negligible operating expense (running costs) when compared to “dirty” fuels.

Profits are likely to go toward wooing investors into giving them $1.5 billion more, half of which will go toward debt repayment.

The crazier part is this - the parent company as a whole will be investing close to $25 billion in capex for green energy projects alone, which is pretty aggressive.

But it’s also the need of the hour, as there’s a big mismatch between the amount of energy needed to power a country of 1.4 billion people, and the amount of energy that we are currently generating.

In other news… ☕

Abu Dhabi oil giant ADNOC uses it’s $150bn budget as fuel for acquisitions (BBG)

White House gets ready to host a conference for influencers (TC)

Betting markets see Biden’s odds of victory plummet by 40% (FT)

India’s core sector growth slows due to sluggish refinery and steel output (Mint)

US Fed’s favorite inflation indicator cools (NYT)

And that’s the tea the chai for today.

Thanks for reading, and we hope you enjoyed it.

Lots of ❤️,

Team CC