There are some weeks that go by at the pace of a snail. Time moves sloooowly, held together by interminable days on which nothing much happens. Then there are weeks that pack so much drama in them that you hardly get a chance to step back, pause, and catch your breath. This week was the latter. It reminded me of that Tintin meme. It, of course, was the Big Budget week, which saw finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman put out a budget that supposedly heralds India's entry into amrit kaal. (Google the term, I promise you will not be disappointed) Then, there was the saga of BharatPe founder Ashneer Grover’s fallout with the company board in the aftermath of a tussle with Kotak Mahindra Bank. Before you could spell the word “exclusive”, another one was landing on the issue. Meanwhile, Facebook announced its quarterly results and made great history, albeit of the kind it wouldn’t have minded skipping. It saw the worst single-day slide in market value for any public company in US history. Nearly $200 billion was wiped out overnight from the social media giant's market cap - roughly how much Reliance is worth. A day later, Amazon logged the greatest ever one-day jump in value post its results, expanding its market capitalization by around $190 billion. Despite so much happening, we had you covered. And, as always, we dug deep to bring you what was happening behind the scenes. For instance, looking into the company's shaky and shady business practices. Quoting rich sources, including a number of ex-employees, she narrated how the company's board and investors are hardly blameless while its PoS machines and P2P lending products skirt around regulations. Similarly, Amazon's story in India hardly mirrors its stellar results. The company is facing one of its most challenging phases, riddled with legal cases, loss-making verticals, and rising competition. It recently proposed to buy out Cloudtail, legally ending the joint venture’s seven-year journey as the largest seller on Amazon India. Amazon, though, has bigger dreams for Cloudtail, as we wrote in this richly reported story. Another newsletter followed it up with a great scoop about a Tata-led consortium that is in talks with government-owned BSNL to build the telco’s 4G network for $1.5-2 billion. As he pointed out, there are big stakes involved for the big names - If successful, it will open doors for Tata to become a bonafide telecom equipment maker. If not, it could doom the loss-making Telco. One of the our reporter dived deep into the testing goldmine that private companies tapped into during India's third Covid wave. As airports set up kiosks for rapid RT-PCR tests, corporates, which had little-to-no diagnostics experience but enough money to throw at the problem, rushed in to grab the opportunity. Yet, near-monopolies and quality control raised concerns, with big names like Adani Group and Tata being involved. Another milestone that we wrapped up a stellar week with a stellar story looking into desi Twitter clone Koo, and why it strangely wants to shake off its political image, despite the UP elections just a few days away. Hence Phew. What a week, huh? We hope you take some time to breathe, catch up, and prepare yourself for the next one. Cheers Up.
Yusuf Bhandarkar +917977231537 Mumbai 400008
what a week