Before you joined us..

A roundup of stuff we wrote before any of you had signed up

We are almost certain that you subscribed to this newsletter sometime in the last three days. There is no rocket science involved here - we started telling people about this newsletter only on Monday.

However, this “pretotype” (pretend prototype) has been in existence for a couple of weeks before most of you subscribed, and we thought we should fill you in on what we wrote in that time. This way, you will get a fuller picture on the kind of stories we write about, and know better what to expect from us.

Telecom Cloud Wars

There was news that Amazon was buying a stake in Airtel. Paired with Facebook’s investment in Jio and rumours of Google’s investment in Vodafone, this made for a nice story.

The Gifts of Maggi

We wrote about Nestle’s troubles in India following the abrupt ban on Maggi, one of their largest brands in India, in 2014.

The Only Person at a Party

Way back in 2004, India permitted “Indian Depository Receipts”, a secondary listing in India for companies already listed abroad. Only one company took it up (in 2010), and that too got delisted earlier this month.

A Platform For Private Equity Firms

When Jio, India’s largest mobile operator, announced their tenth investment in the course of two months, we had to do a story on it. We hadn’t anticipated that they would get an eleventh investment less than a week later.

JLR says Tata to profits, again

Like many others around the world, India’s Tata Sons (a large conglomerate) did some global LBOs (leveraged buyouts) in 2007-8. Unsurprisingly, they didn’t go well. This story was about Tata Motors’ investment in Jaguar LandRover.

This Cookie Didn’t Crumble

India’s largest selling biscuit brand is Parle G. This time last year, it was staring at slowing growth. The covid-19 crisis has has revived its fortunes.

Teach your children well

Yet another industry that has seen an uptick in fortunes in the covid-19 crisis is education technology (Ed Tech). We put together a bunch of stories from that sector. TL;DR : Test prep and reskilling is doing well, but school education not so much.

War by other means

Chinese soldiers have been trying to occupy Indian territory along the border in Eastern Ladakh (north India). This might have some collateral damage on Indian startups that have raised money from Chinese investors.

India’s largest company doesn’t want to owe money

We went back to Jio, and its parent Reliance Industries, and its efforts in becoming a “zero net debt” company. It was also a good time to update that Jio had got an eleventh investment.

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After this, many of you subscribed, so we will spare you those summaries. However, this kind of a summary email will go out once a week, maybe on Saturday, so you can catch up on anything you missed during the week.