ByteDance and Saveo
Jan 29
Good morning, it's finally Friday and my god has it been a week. If you're on twitter it's hard to miss all the Robinhood, Reddit, GameShop action and at this point I'm just exhausted from it all. On the other hand, it's been a quiet week back in India (probably because of Republic Day this week) so there isn't as much to talk about. TikTok did announce it would lay off a large number of its employees in India and a new seed round to talk about.
http://bit.ly/3r2yrHa: ByteDance begins layoffs in India
➡️ ByteDance, the parent company of TikTok, has begun the process of laying off its employees in India, following a permanent ban on the app- the total number of people losing their jobs hasn't been announced yet but it could be over 1800 (of ~2000) reducing the company's employee base by 90%
➡️ When the country initially banned the app, I and many others thought it would just be temporary, but as the months continued that became less and less likely- and the recent permanent ban is likely the final nail in the coffin for the company.
➡️ TikTok took off like a storm in India, quickly growing to 200M MAUs with a large user base on its other apps (i.e Helo) through largely unsustainable means. The company also didn't really turn on its advertising market completely before it had been banned by India.
➡️ I do feel bad for the employees who are stuck in a really hard place where the government doesn't want their employer to exist in the country and hope they can find new gigs. But as the Chinese market is largely not welcome to Indian startups, I think its only fair that India shuts off their market to Chinese companies as well.
➡️ It also looks like this hasn't affected ByteDance at all- the company doubled its revenues from $17B to $37B (its revenues are roughly half of Facebook's revenues from a year ago) and barring some sort of ban in the United States, it seems like the company will continue dominating in 2021.
http://bit.ly/36pdFd7: Saveo raises $4M from Matrix and RTP Global
➡️ If B2C eCommerce marketplaces were the first wave of online commerce in the country, B2B is quitely likely the next- B2B marketplace for pharmacies Saveo has raised $4M in a seed round co-led by Matrix Partners and RTP Global along with participation from India Quotient, Incubate Fund and angels like Kunal Shah
➡️ The company's founder said they will use the capital to expand their services in Bangalore and Karnataka and expand into neighboring markets like Hyderabad and Chennai.
➡️ I think there is a growing and very noticeable trend of the first wave of companies enabling consumers directly, while in this second wave companies are enabling businesses to enable their consumers.
➡️ Unacademy was the first wave for students to learn online, Classplus is the next wave to let tutors run their operations and teach online so students can learn online. Similarly if 1mg/Pharmeasy sell medication to consumers online, Saveo will help local pharmacies run their business with the help of technology.
Feedback & ❤️ always appreciated
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