BYJU’S plans for Aakash IPO; Inside Naval Ravikant’s social media app, AirChat

Hello,

Investors stay optimistic as Sensex rose 240 points while Nifty closed 0.32% higher at 18,593 on reports that the US Federal Reserve intends to skip an interest rate hike this month.

Adding to the cheer, India's services sector registered the second-strongest rate of growth in nearly 13 years. Though the S&P Global India Services PMI Business Activity Index fell from 62 in April to 61.2 in May, it is still the second-fastest pace of growth in nearly 13 years. A reading above 50 indicates expansion, while one below signals a contraction.

Meanwhile, Switzerland-based on-demand edtech platform Avidii expanded its footprint to India, onboarding more than 400 tutors. It offers 24x7 on-demand classes in various subjects, primarily for students between the ages of 11 and 18.

In other news, Tata Chemicals MD and CEO R Mukundan said India’s demand in the auto sector will reach 7 million units this fiscal year as the country pivots towards electric vehicles.

But with high EV penetration and electronics use, e-waste is also becoming a big problem.

According to a report by Avendus Capital, India generated ~5.8 million MT of e-waste in FY23. The battery recycling and reuse market is expected to grow by more than 20X to touch ~$2 billion by FY30, driven by rising EV adoption and the need to conserve and recover rare earth elements.

ICYMI: This apartment complex in Paris has one of the most distinctive and unusual architectures for a housing estate.

In today’s newsletter, we will talk about

• BYJU'S plans for Aakash IPO
• Inside Naval Ravikant’s social media app, AirChat
• Earn by playing cricket on Bowled.io

Here’s your trivia for today: Which is the shallowest sea on Earth?

Edtech

BYJU’S plans for Aakash IPO

Edtech unicorn BYJU'S will launch the initial public offering (IPO) of its subsidiary Aakash Education Services Limited by mid-2024. BYJU’S board has officially approved the IPO, said the Bengaluru-based company, adding that it would announce the appointment of merchant bankers for the IPO shortly.

Go to market:

• Earlier, it was reported that the size of the IPO could be in the range of $1 billion, valuing Aakash at $3.5 billion-$4 billion.
• Aakash’s revenue is expected to reach Rs 4,000 crore, with an EBITDA of Rs 900 crore in FY24. In March, Aakash said it expected to close FY23 with a revenue of Rs 3,000 crore.
• The IPO development comes when BYJU'S lenders have reportedly abandoned discussions with the company on a $1.2-billion loan restructuring. It plans to make a quarterly interest payment of about $40 million on the loan to meet the June 5 deadline, a Bloomberg report noted.

Funding Alert

Startup: sentra.world

Amount: $2M

Round: Seed

Startup: Damroo

Amount: Undisclosed

Round: Seed

Interview

Inside Naval Ravikant’s social media app, AirChat

Conversations, whether offline or online, should be authentic and meaningful, unlike the one-way communication we’ve become accustomed to, says entrepreneur and investor Naval Ravikant. In an exclusive interview with YourStory, the investor revealed he is trying to bring back banter with his latest startup—AirChat.

A fun platform:

• Ravikant, Founder of AngelList and an investor in companies like Twitter and Uber, calls his venture “a dinner party in your pocket”.
• “The current social media platforms just aren't designed for conversation. Most of them are broadcast media, some of them are live. They don't have the right privacy or moderation features, there's too much censorship and top-down control,” he says on what made him launch AirChat.
• “Social media is focused on what media type it is addressing. Our model is about conversations. The best conversation you can possibly have with the most like-minded, easygoing person that you can find,” he shares.

Web3

Earn by playing cricket on Bowled.io

Rahul Singh and Akshay Khandelwal—through their experience working on sports entertainment products—did not find a single platform where cricket fans could engage with each other, play games, trade collectibles, and more.

This led to the genesis of Bowled.io—a sports-based social gaming platform targeting cricket fans.

Play and collect:

• To make the fan experience more engaging, Bowled.io has built a platform where users can play hyper-casual games, connect, own digital collectibles, and win rewards.
• The platform has six hyper-cause cricket games, two card games, and one social gaming feature, and it claims to see traction from well over 100 countries.
• Ronin—a blockchain built by Sky Mavis, which also built Axie Infinity—powers the NFT experience on Bowled.io. It is crafted for such developers to build games with player-owned economies.

News & updates

• AI regulation: The European Union has urged social media companies, including Google and Facebook, to “immediately” start labelling content and images generated by artificial intelligence to combat fake news. It also asked Twitter to comply with new digital content laws.
• Take off: The International Air Transport Association (IATA) announced an expected strengthening of airline industry profitability in an upgrade of its outlook for 2023. It also warned delays in getting planes to cope with rising demand could dampen their post-pandemic recovery.
• Breakthrough: Moderna Inc and Merck & Co announced that an experimental mRNA-based vaccine reduced the risk of the most deadly form of skin cancer spreading to other body parts by 65%. The clinical trial enrolled 157 patients.

Which is the shallowest sea on Earth?

Answer: The Sea of Azov in Eastern Europe. It has an average water depth of 7 metres and a maximum depth of 14 metres.

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