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    A software can earn you billions but not a (legitimate) win against a Grandmaster. That should serve as a lesson for India’s youngest billionaire.

    Also in this letter:

    💸 Glance acquires Shop101
    ⬆️ Bitcoin sways to Musk, again
    🛒 Thrasio eyes listing via SPAC

    Nikhil Kamath's Chess controversy

    Rigged
    GIF Credit: Giphy

    Zerodha co-founder Nikhil Kamath has apologised for causing “confusion” by using unfair means to win a game of chess against five-time world champion Viswanathan Anand in a charity match held on Sunday. His apology came after Chess.com banned Kamath's profile for violating its fair use policy.


    Tell me more: A charity chess match was held between Indian chess Grandmaster Vishwanathan Anand and top personalities like Aamir Khan, Riteish Deshmukh, Manu Kumar Jain and Yuzvendra Chahal with an aim to raise funds for Covid-19 relief efforts.

    Anand won all the matches held simultaneously with an exception of Kamath, who at the time termed that "he just got lucky".

    Why was the account banned? Chess.com’s chief chess officer Daniel Rensch said their goal is to protect the integrity of all games played on their site.

    "No account closure is made without hard, statistical evidence as well as a rigorous manual review. The Chess.com Fair Play Team consists of chess experts (including multiple titled players) and engineers who specialize in algorithms used to detect "anomalies" and "patterns" of non-human influence"


    Getting help: On Monday afternoon, as his profile ban got more traction on Twitter and Reddit, Kamath admitted that he had help from “people analyzing the game, computers, and the graciousness of Anand sir himself to treat the game as a learning experience”.

    This statement drew the ire of Anand, event commentators, and several other Chess grandmasters in India and other countries.



    Kamath is one of the youngest billionaires in India. Recently, Zerodha had passed a special resolution to pay annual salaries of Rs 100 crore each to founders Nithin and Nikhil Kamath, as well as to whole-time director Seema Patil.

    InMobi's Glance buys Shop101

    Short video monetisation

    InMobi-owned lockscreen content platform Glance is foraying into the fast-growing, influencer-led commerce segment to take on global rivals TikTok and Instagram.

    Driving the news: Glance has acquired Mumbai-based social commerce startup Shop101 in a cash-and-stock deal—its first strategic deal investment since raising $145 million from Google and others in December last year.

    What's the plan? This purchase will help Glance and its short video platform Roposo to enter celebrity and influencer-led live commerce. Shop101 brings e-commerce technology, supply chain infrastructure and talent, apart from its base of 10 million resellers and 10,000 suppliers.

    • After starting with India, Glance plans to soon take this platform to Southeast Asia and Latin America. InMobi is eyeing content-driven commerce as the second big monetisation channel for both these platforms after advertising.

    Booming China live-streaming business: Chinese internet giant ByteDance sold about $26 billion worth of make-up, clothing and other merchandise in 2020, Bloomberg reports, with TikTok's Chinese version Douyin expected to contribute more than half of the company's $40 billion domestic ad sales this year, partly driven by e-commerce. Meanwhile, Alibaba's live-streaming platform Taobao Live clocked over $60 billion in gross merchandise value in 2020.

    InMobi IPO plans: InMobi has kickstarted its US IPO process by appointing three investment banks—including JPMorgan and Goldman Sachs—as advisers to help raise $500 million to $1 billion, ET reported last month. The company's largest shareholder SoftBank had also transferred its around 40% shareholding to SoftBank Vision Fund II, people aware of the development had told us at the time.

    Big Picture: Live commerce segment is expected to account for $4-5 billion GMV by 2025, according to market tracker RedSeer Consulting, which will be split between e-commerce platforms and short video apps. The overall social commerce market is expected to grow to $16-20 billion GMV by 2025 from a $2 billion market in 2020, according to a Bain report.

    Tweet of the day


    Bitcoin jumps again on Musk tweet

    Saturday Night Live

    Tesla chief executive Elon Musk's love-hate relationship with bitcoin continues, even as he fended off allegations of "price manipulation".

    What happened? Bitcoin's price surged to a two-week high of $40,858 on Monday from a low of $34,982 at the start of trading on Sunday, after Musk said Tesla will resume allowing Bitcoin transactions where there's a confirmation that miners are using about "50% of clean energy with positive future trend".


    Musk also noted that Tesla sold only about 10% of its holdings "to confirm BTC (Bitcoin) could be liquidated easily without moving the market.”

    Catch up quick: Tesla had purchased about $1.5 billion in bitcoin in February and had said it would accept the digital coin as a payment option. Last month, Musk however announced on Twitter that Tesla would stop this practice citing concerns with "rapidly increasing use of fossil fuels for Bitcoin mining and transactions...which has the worst emissions of any fuel".

    This move triggered a Bitcoin rout, with the cryptocurrency falling by nearly 17% without hours of the tweet. Since then, it has further slumped to reach $30,000 last month from a peak of $65,000 in mid-April. A massive crackdown from Chinese regulators also contributed to this slide.

    Price manipulation? Musk's tweet on Sunday was made in response to “price manipulation” allegations from Sygnia co-founder Magda Wierzycka in a radio interview last week. Wierzycka had said that Musk's tweets should have made him subject to a US SEC investigation if Bitcoin were more of a traditional company, an allegation which Musk termed as incorrect.

    ETtech Deals Digest

    Flipkart logo

    ■ Abu Dhabi’s sovereign fund ADQ is in talks to invest about $500 million in Walmart-owned Flipkart that could value the firm between $35 billion and $40 billion, Bloomberg reports. Earlier this month, ET had reported that ADQ may participate in the e-tailer's next funding round. SoftBank Vision Fund has also held discussions with Flipkart to invest around $600-700 million, nearly three years after exiting the company, it said.

    ■ B2B marketplace Jumbotail has raised Rs 35 crore debt from Alteria Capital to expand its operations and scale its small business-focused fintech business. It had earlier raised $14.2 million in equity financing led by VII Ventures, bringing to a close the company’s $44 million Series B round.

    SimpliContract, a SaaS-based contract lifecycle management platform, has raised $1.8 million in a seed funding round led by Kalaari Capital, with participation from Picus Capital, Arka Venture Labs, and Digital Sparrow Capital. The startup plans to use the funds raised to drive its efforts in engineering, artificial intelligence research, and marketing.

    Thrasio eyes public market debut

    Brand

    Thrasio, the world’s largest acquirer of third-party private label businesses on Amazon, is aiming to go public through the SPAC route.

    What's a SPAC? Read our explainer

    Details: Thrasio is in talks with a blank-cheque company Churchill Capital Corp. V, set up by veteran Wall Street dealmaker Michael Klein, reports Bloomberg. The deal could value the company at over $2 billion, which could go as high as $10 billion, it said.

    • Klein's previous SPACs have agreed to deals that would take companies like electric vehicle maker Lucid Motors and healthcare service provider Multiplan public. Churchill Capital V had raised $500 million in its IPO in December last year.

    Thrasio has raised $1.7 billion across debt and equity and is reportedly worth $3-4 billion. It has bought, consolidated and scaled up about 100 brands on Amazon within three years.

    Indian Thrasio-like startups: The Thrasio model is also fast catching up as a business model in the country with several startups raising money to build a 'house of brands'.

    Mensa Brands, the new venture of former Myntra CEO and Medlife co-founder Ananth Narayanan, raised around $50 million in a mix of equity and debt last month. Mensa will look to pick up a majority stake (60-65%) in profitable online-first brands that have a revenue of Rs 10-70 crore, and may eventually buy them out over three years.

    ■ Firstcry is expected to launch India’s largest Thrasio-style investment venture GlobalBees with a $75 million capital commitment from investors such as Japan’s SoftBank Group Corp, TPG Capital, ChrysCapital and Premji Invest.

    Goat Brands Labs, a venture setup by veteran fashion retail executive Rishi Vasudev who previously headed Flipkart's fashion business, is set to raise about $20 million led by New York-based investment firm Tiger Global.

    Powerhouse91, a startup by serial entrepreneurs Shashwat Diesh and Aqib Mohammed, has received backing from Snapdeal founder Kunal Bahl and Rohit Bansal's fund Titan Capital.

    Today’s ETtech Top 5 was written by Vikas SN in Bengaluru and edited by Tushar Deep Singh in Mumbai.

    Updated On Jun 14, 2021, 08:22 PM IST

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    The Economic Times