Newsletter
☀️ Morning, folks!
Last day to throw around those “Happy New Year” greetings—use them wisely.
📈 While the year started strong, it’s already giving 2020 vibes with the AI buzz and a new virus on the radar: HMPV. The first case popped up in Bengaluru yesterday.
📉 Investors weren’t thrilled—markets took a hit, with Sensex and Nifty both dropping 1.6%.
Couple of things that caught our attention.
Let’s hit it!
1 Big Thing: ITC spins off hotel business 🛎️
ITC has officially demerged its hotel business, creating a standalone entity, ITC Hotels, effective January 1.
The deets: the demerger will enable ITC to refocus on its core, scalable, product-based businesses—cigarettes and FMCG—while shedding the capital-intensive hotel operations.
Worth noting: on January 6, ITC shares adjusted to reflect the demerger, settling at ₹455.6, down about ₹27.
What’s ahead: ITC hotels will plan to expand its portfolio, targeting over 200 hotels with more than 18,000 rooms in the next five years (up from ∼140 hotels right now).
Bottomline: India's hotel industry could grow to $60 billion by 2030, growing at close to 10% each year.
2. SUVs lead the charge 🚗
India’s car market just had a major shake-up. For the first time in 40 years, a non-Maruti Suzuki car is the best-seller.
In 2024, the Tata Punch, a sub-compact SUV, led the domestic auto market with just over 2 Lakh units sold.
What matters: Indian buyers are aggressively gravitating towards SUVs, which can be noted in SUV's making up nearly 50% of all passenger cars sold in 2024.
Second, people are also looking for feature-rich cars. This puts basic players like Maruti at a disadvantage, although that gap is closing.
Third, Tata Motors is simply killing it, with a refreshing marketing machine, a strong line up of cars and a distribution network that has been rapidly scaling.
Big picture: India sold 4.3 million passenger cars in 2024, up 4.7% YoY, which is decent growth despite concerns of a broad slowdown.
3. A quick gaming acquisition 🧳
Nazara Technologies has acquired a 47% stake in Moonshine Technology Private Limited (MTPL) for $99 million.
The deets: MTPL is known for its flagship product, PokerBaazi, one of India's leading online poker platforms. PokerBaazi, has over 3 lakh monthly active users and generates over 85% of the company's net revenue.
Why it matters: Nazara has been on an acquisition spree lately — picking up stakes in Fusebox Games for ₹228 crore and Stan Gaming for ₹18 crore.
Additionally, it fully acquired Paper Boat Apps, the developer of the popular children’s app Kiddopia, for ₹300 crore, spreading its tentacles quite broad.
Worth noting: the company aims to invest $100 million in mergers and acquisitions over the next two years to capitalize on the growing gamer base in India.
Nazara’s stock hit a 52-week high following the news.
4. Stock that kept us interested 📈
Gensol Engineering jumped this week after bagging a ₹1,100 crore engineering, procurement, and construction contract for a 275MW solar project in Gujarat.
FYI, Gensol is a renewable energy company that specializes in solar EPC, battery storage systems, and green hydrogen infrastructure.
Context: The contract, awarded by a major PSU, includes engineering, procurement, construction, and three years of operations and maintenance services.
By the numbers: Gensol has a market cap of over ₹2,700 crore and has executed over 770 MW of solar projects across India.
What else are we snackin’ 🍿
💥 Funding crash: India’s space sector funding dropped 55% in 2024, falling to $59 million from $130 million in 2023.
📉 Record drop: Indian rupee dropped to a record low of 85.8 against the dollar.
👋 Trudeau's exit: Justin Trudeau is set to step down as leader of Canada’s Liberal Party ahead of this year’s expected general election loss.
That’s a wrap! Don’t let the Weekday blues get to you.
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