Tiger Global nearly halves Zomato stake; key takeaways from Premiere of ET Soonicorns Summit

Also in this letter:
■ Key takeaways from Premiere of ET Soonicorns Summit
■ Reliance-backed Dunzo’s B2B logistics arm joins ONDC
■ Softbank raises $22 billion through Alibaba derivatives sale: report

Tiger Global sells 18.44 crore Zomato shares, nearly halves stake

US hedge fund Tiger Global has reduced its shareholding in Zomato by about half by selling 18.44 crore shares in a series of bulk deals between July 25 and August 2.

Before the sale, Tiger Global’s Internet Fund VI held a 5.11% stake in the food delivery firm, which is now down to 2.77%.

Lock-in expired on July 23: It sold the shares in several open-market deals after the mandatory one-year lock-in period for pre-IPO investors ended on July 23.

Besides Tiger Global, a number of other pre-IPO investors have been exiting the stock since then.

On August 3, Uber Technologies sold its entire 7.78% stake in the company at an average price of Rs 50.44 a share. Uber picked up a stake in Zomato after the food delivery firm acquired its local food business UberEats in an all-stock deal in 2020.

A clutch of institutional investors such as Fidelity, ICICI Prudential Life Insurance and Franklin Templeton have been buying up the stock from these pre-IPO investors.

Shares of Zomato, which have fallen around 65% from their 52-week high of Rs 169 in November, closed at Rs 57.85 on NSE on Thursday, up 4.33%.

Restructuring ‘not material’: Meanwhile, Zomato told BSE on Thursday that an internal note about changing its structure and appointing a chief executive for each of its businesses was “not material” and thus did not require a disclosure.

In response to a clarification sought by BSE on news reports that Zomato was changing its internal structure, the company said the reports were based on an internal communication CEO Deepinder Goyal shared with employees.

We reported on August 1 that Goyal told employees in a memo that Zomato had internally rebranded itself as ‘Eternal’, an entity that would house its multiple businesses, each with their own CEO.

Key takeaways from Premiere of ET Soonicorns Summit

At the curtain raiser for the ET Soonicorns Summit, key policymakers, tech industry leaders and prominent names from India’s burgeoning startup ecosystem came together to share valuable insights on what’s needed to unlock the growth potential of the next generation of unicorns and decacorns that are set to define the new India economy.

At the premiere event for the ET Soonicorns Summit, powered by AWS, keynote speakers Dr. Ashwath Narayan C.N., Minister of Higher Education, IT & BT, Science and Technology, Skill Development, Government of Karnataka; Anil Agrawal, Additional Secretary, DPIIT, Government of India; and Puneet Chandok, President, India and South Asia, Amazon Web Services (AWS) highlighted the strong market opportunity for Indian startups to build and scale, not just in India, but also for the world.

Metrics that matter: Among the speakers were top entrepreneurs Ananth Narayanan, Founder & CEO of D2C ecommerce roll-up Mensa Brands, and Ankush Sachdeva, Co-founder and CEO of social media platform Sharechat, who spoke about the hard lessons learnt in scaling unicorns eyeing global scale and detailed the growth metrics that should matter to future unicorns.

Catalyst for growth: The premiere event and the mega two-day ET Soonicorns Summit, scheduled to take place in September, will serve as the first-ever platform dedicated to catalysing the growth of India’s future unicorns with a focus on building tenable, long-term businesses driven by sound corporate governance and a path to profitability.

Click here to register for ET Soonicorns Summit. You can also watch highlights of the premiere, and find out more about the event.

Dunzo’s B2B logistics arm joins ONDC

Reliance-backed Dunzo’s B2B logistics arm Dunzo for Business (D4B) has partnered with the Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC) to provide last-mile delivery services to businesses on the network.

Just three days ago, we reported that Reliance had marked its entry into ONDC after its last-mile logistics provider Grab.in agreed to integrate with the platform.

Quote: “Starting our journey with key metros, we will scale our services to more cities and become the backbone for intra-city deliveries in the Indian ecommerce ecosystem,” said Dalvir Suri, cofounder of Dunzo.

Meanwhile, a senior ONDC executive revealed that live video shopping and selling app Kiko Live has also integrated with ONDC. Kiko has about 10,000 registered sellers across categories like grocery, stationery, and cosmetics. It plans to go live on ONDC by September.

Softbank raises $22 billion through Alibaba derivatives sale: report

Investment giant Softbank has raised $22 billion in cash through the sale of prepaid forward contracts using Alibaba shares, reported the Financial Times.

Shedding to raise: The report said Softbank raised about $13.17 billion through the sale of forward contracts using Alibaba shares last year. The company has been raising money this way since 2016 to avoid putting pressure on Alibaba’s stock price and retain its board seat.

Quote: “This way of execution, more of a delayed approach, is better than direct sale in the market as the latter could have certain shocks on stock price in the short term,” said an analyst.

The Masayoshi Son-led behemoth was Alibaba’s largest investor during its early days. However, in the past few years, it has been trimming its stake in the ecommerce company to offset its heavy losses. Earlier this year, Softbank’s Vision Fund posted a record $26 billion loss owing to plunging valuations of tech stocks worldwide.

Tweet of the day

India sees increased 5G smartphone shipments from China despite crackdowns

Despite its recent crackdowns on Chinese smartphone makers Vivo, Xiaomi and Oppo, India witnessed an increase in 5G smartphone shipments from China, according to CyberMedia Research’s (CMR) ‘India Mobile Handset Market’ report.

Tell me more: Most of the top Chinese smartphone brands registered healthy growth during the quarter, barring the market leader.

Xiaomi (20%), Samsung (18%) and Realme (16%) were the top three smartphone makers in Q2, followed by Vivo (15%) and Oppo (10%).

Crackdown: The news comes amid a crackdown on Chinese smartphone makers in India.

• Last month the ED alleged the Indian arm of Vivo had sent Rs 62,476 crore “illegally” to China to avoid paying taxes in India.

Today’s ETtech Top 5 newsletter was curated by Zaheer Merchant in Mumbai and Ruchir Vyas in New Delhi. Graphics and illustrations by Rahul Awasthi.