Boss Man 💸

☀️ Morning, December continues to remain eventful.

🤖 Google surprised the world with an elite Quantum chip yesterday—Willow—which absolutely destroys the speed of traditional computers. Don’t hold your breath though, commercial applications are light years ahead.

📈 The markets hit a bit of a pause yesterday—digesting the incredible run so far this year. Sensex was down 0.25%.

Let’s go!

1 Big Thing: RBI gets a new boss man 😎

Seasoned bureaucrat and India’s revenue secretary Sanjay Malhotra is set to take charge as the new RBI Governor, succeeding Shaktikanta Das.

Das, a legend himself, will be credited with navigating India’s economy quite well through the COVID-19 crisis. But change is long due as the future presents new challenges.

What’s at stake: the RBI has a tough balancing act ahead. India’s growth is faltering, which is unacceptable. RBI’s interest rates need to come down so businesses can easily borrow money to expand. But bringing interest rates down is hard when inflation is as high as 6% (actually probably a lot more than that).

To that, add Trump and the western rhetoric of America first, tariffs, strong dollar etc, which adds more nuance.

Background: a 1990 batch IAS officer from the Rajasthan cadre, Malhotra holds a bachelor’s degree in computer science from IIT Kanpur and a master’s from Princeton University.

Zoom out: Malhotra is viewed by the markets as a pro-business pick, and is expected to advocate for low taxation and potentially cutting red tape to let business flourish.

Besides, the government’s expectation is also pretty clear— keep the economy buzzing while leveraging trickle-down economics to take care of everything else.

2. Metropolis expands oncology play💉

Metropolis Healthcare, India's second-largest pathology laboratory chain, will acquire Delhi-NCR-based specialized cancer diagnostics player Core Diagnostics for ₹247 crore—doubling down on the rapidly growing oncology testing market.

What matters: the acquisition, a cash and equity mix, will see Core's team of about 500 employees joining Metropolis. The deal was priced at roughly 1.6 times FY25 revenue, which isn’t too bad in today’s market environment.

Zoom out: India’s massive population, with arguably not the best lifestyle habits, is witnessing an alarming rise in cancer cases. Demand for cancer testing is expected to expand at a CAGR of 17.5% from 2023 to 2028.

The deal will boost Metropolis' super-specialty test revenue from 37% to 41% and oncology test revenue from 4% to 10%. Metropolis stock was trading up 3% on the news.

3. Major updates from Venture town 💰

• Entrackr reported that Pixxel, one of India’s hottest space-ventures, raised $24 million in Series B funding. M&G Catalyst and Glade Brook Capital participated in the round. Pixxel will use the cash to launch 18 more commercial hyper-spectral satellites and expand its AI-driven Earth Observation platform, Aurora. Pixxel's satellites aim to provide detailed imagery for better understanding of Earth’s environment, and the data is currently sold to mining companies, energy companies, large agricultural players, and such.
• YourStory covered the Series C raise of Wooden Street, which raised $43 million from Premji Invest to expand its retail presence. Wooden Street sells modular furniture through online and offline channels, and got its start in Jaipur. Capital will go towards store expansion and manufacturing improvements.Share

4. Walmart sees a Flipkart IPO coming 🛒

ET reported that Flipkart could go public within the next 12 months or so, marking the entry of India’s OG internet giant into the public markets where it truly belongs

The deets: currently valued at $36 billion, the actual valuation could be much higher. The company is in the process of shifting its domicile from Singapore to India. As of last year, revenues were just over $2 billion, growing a healthy 20%+ YoY.

Context: Walmart owns 81% of Flipkart, and has invested $2B since 2018 and is betting big on the company's future.

Also, the business has a lot more juice and exciting parts:

• Recently, Flipkart launched 'Minutes’, a credible play into the quick commerce market
• Its UPI payments app, Super.money, is doing quite well
• Beyond commerce, they’ve also been killing it with ads, virtually powering’s Walmart’s global retail-advertising technology

Big picture: a household name, with strong brand value, in a rapidly expanding ecommerce market with all the right bets in place—this is the crown jewel in Walmart’s global digital commerce portfolio.

What else are we snackin’ 🍿

😎Lenskart's vision: Lenskart plans to invest ₹1,500 crore in Telangana to establish the world’s largest eyewear manufacturing facility jobs at Fab City, aiming to create 2,100 jobs.

🤝Birla's big bet: Aditya Birla Group is set to invest ₹50,000 crore into Rajasthan, with bold plans for cement, renewables, telecom, and retail expansion.

📈Turning around: Myntra reported a ₹30.9 crore profit for FY24, a sharp turnaround from last year's ₹782.4 crore loss.

That’s a wrap! Don’t let the Weekday blues get to you.

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