SoftBank sells more Paytm shares; Building a clean beauty brand

Hello,

Say no to service fee. Period.

On Tuesday, the Tamil Nadu court told Google that it cannot remove Disney's streaming app Disney+ Hotstar from its app store in the country, reported Reuters. Instead, it said that the company should receive a lower 4% fee for in-app purchases, a significant challenge to the tech giant’s payments business model.

Disney's lawsuit is the latest challenge to Google's policy of imposing a service fee of 11-26% on in-app payments in India. Last October, India's competition watchdog imposed a $113 million fine on the company, saying it must allow the use of third-party billing and stop forcing developers to use its in-app payment.

Elsewhere, boAt Lifestyle's listing is "definitely not this year", Co-founder Aman Gupta told PTI. The audio and wearables brand, which had earlier deferred its public share sale plans amid stock market volatility, is looking at FY25-FY26 timeframe for the IPO, he said.

Lastly, here’s a quiz to test your AI knowledge.

Time to see how ready you are for the unknown future.

In today’s newsletter, we will talk about 

• SoftBank sells more Paytm shares
• Building an Ayurvedic beauty brand
• Garage management solutions on cloud

Here’s your trivia for today: Which metro system has the highest number of stations?

Fintech

SoftBank offloads more Paytm shares

SVF India Holdings (Cayman) Limited, a SoftBank arm, has divested another 2% stake in Paytm's parent One97 Communications through an open market transaction in order to comply with SEBI regulation.  Post the sale, the Japanese investor’s stake in the fintech startup has reduced to 9.15%. 

The trim:

• Last November, SoftBank offloaded a 4.5% stake in Paytm for Rs 1,631 crore (over $205 million), followed by another 2.07% stake for $120 million between February and May 2023. 
• SoftBank Vision Fund I had invested $1.4 billion in Paytm, starting in 2017, and had managed to cash out $220 million to $250 million during the company’s IPO last year. 
• For the quarter ended June 30, 2022, SoftBank had marked down its investment in Paytm by $400 million as the shares of the listed fintech lost nearly 72% over the year, compared to its issue price of Rs 2,150. 

<Funding Alert>

Startup: RenewBuy

Amount: $40M

Round: Series D

Startup: Factors.AI

Amount: $3.5M

Round: Pre-Series A

Startup: 0xPass

Amount: $1.8M

Round: Pre-Seed

Beauty and personal care

Building a clean beauty brand

The global Ayurvedic market was valued at $6.50 billion in 2021. It is predicted to reach $21.12 billion by 2028 at a CAGR of 15.63%. Among all the segments, personal care products, including skin care, have the biggest market share and are expected to remain dominant in the coming years. 

Visage Beauty & Healthcare, the parent company of beauty brand O3 Plus, is revamping its organic beauty and skincare brand, Sara Beauty, to tap into the clean beauty market. 

From nature:

• Visage Beauty was formally incorporated in 2004 to specifically cater to the salon industry and provide customised products for beauticians and professionals. 
• Sara has 27,000 followers on Instagram, and sells through its website and other ecommerce platforms like Amazon and Nykaa. It is available in 25,000 to 30,000 salons across India.
• VLCC, Nature Essence, and Lotus are its main competitors. 

Startups

Garage management solutions on cloud

Founded in 2017 by Amit Kumar, Praveen Yalla, and Rakesh Biswal, Hyderabad-based RAMP GLOBAL is a cloud-based garage management software for multi-branded workshops. Its international expansion began in 2021 with Oman, followed by Bahrain, Qatar, the UAE, and Saudi Arabia. Ramp also provides its services to Kenya, Nigeria, and South Africa. 

Under the hood:

• Ramp provides customer relationship management, invoicing, inventory and spare parts management, counter sales, technician productivity tracking, renewal alerts, and payment integration.
• It streamlines operations related to vehicle servicing and provides real-time tracking of vehicle locations and progress in the workshop. 
• About 25% of Ramp’s clientele is from the Middle East. 

News & updates

• Unpopular: ByteDance’s Lemon8 reached the top 10 most downloaded apps in March after its launch in the U.S, but its number of daily active users have plummeted. Described as a cross between Pinterest and Instagram, it has also been compared to Chinese social media app Xiaohongshu.
• Flexible: India plans to further relax its approach to data storage, processing, and transfer beyond its borders, a boon for global companies and Indian firms seeking growth abroad. A draft version of a new privacy bill allows companies to export data to any country except those specifically named by New Delhi.
• Paying up: Spain's antitrust watchdog on Tuesday said it had imposed fines worth a total 194.1 million euros ($218.03 million) on Amazon and Apple for colluding to limit the online sale of devices from Apple and competitors in Spain.

Which metro system has the highest number of stations?

Answer: The New York City Subway. It has 472 stations.

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