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Good morning. Rihanna has now sold over 1 million total album units in the US alone in 2024. She is the only artist to reach this milestone without having released an album in the 2020s.

Rihanna will forever stay winning but also, Rihanna, please release new music.

- Ruchrngd Sharma & Shatakshi Sharma  

🧵 In today’s issue:

• 📊 Markets recap

• 💰️ Quick fundraising

• ☁️ Hotbed

• 🗞️ Bite-sized summaries

  • How’s inflation looking?

  • Suing no more

• 🧑‍🍳 What else is cookin’? (quick links)

• 🍿 Entertainment, Entertainment, Entertainment

📊 Markets

🇮🇳 India

• Indian equity markets saw a slight increase, with Sensex and Nifty up by 0.2% and 0.25% due to stocks like Coal India, Power Grid, and Eicher Motors. However, Britannia, M&M, HUL, Titan, and Axis Bank experienced losses. The BSE MidCap and SmallCap grew by 1%. All sectors, barring FMCG, ended positively as investors awaited the US Fed decision and India's May CPI inflation data.

🌍️ International

• U.S. stocks hit record highs due to low inflation, but gains were limited by stricter Fed policy. The dollar rebounded with the Fed keeping interest rates steady, hinting at one possible cut till 2024. Treasury yields varied following CPI data and the Fed's stance. Despite low inflation, high price growth delays rate-cut expectations. Oil prices rose due to Middle East tensions and tighter supply forecasts.

💰️ Quick fundraising

Zepto, the ultra-fast delivery startup, is close to raising a new financing round that could value the company at around $3B. High-profile investors, such as DST Global, Lightspeed Venture Partners, and others, are expected to join this round.

Here’s why this is important: 

• This significant interest from marquee investors highlights quick commerce platforms' growing adoption and potential, despite the high cash burn rates typical for consumer-focused businesses. 

• The round, which was initially targeting $300-350M at a $2.5-3B valuation, has seen robust demand and may now be closed in tranches.

• The participation of DST Global, the investment fund by Russian billionaire Yuri Milner that previously backed Indian unicorns like Flipkart and Ola, is notable as the fund has recently reduced its India exposure. 

• Lightspeed's investment will come from its growth fund as it continues evaluating late-stage Indian deals.

Overall: With this funding, Zepto aims to go public within a year and is already preparing for an IPO by relocating its domicile back to India from Singapore. 

The capital will fuel Zepto's expansion amid intense competition from rivals like Blinkit, and Instamart and upcoming offerings from giants like Flipkart.

The quick commerce sector is heating up, projected to reach $6B in gross merchandise value by 2025 as players diversify offerings to challenge Amazon and Flipkart's e-commerce dominance.

Read more: Economic Times

☁️ Hotbed

India is emerging as a global hotbed for startups and a key market for Google Cloud, with the company increasing investments in Indian startups, particularly those in AI innovation.

Here’s why this is important: 

• To support startups, Google Cloud is offering discounts and credit to make it easier for them to get started on its platform. The company has two large data centres in India.

• India also has big plans to offer digital public goods (DPG) and digital public infrastructure (DPI) across sectors. Google Cloud is working with EkStep Foundation to potentially take these DPG/DPI solutions global after deploying them in India.

Overall: India is a major focus for Google Cloud in terms of hiring as well. A quarter of its developers are based in India, which has the second-largest developer community on GitHub after the US.

The company is dedicating significant resources to India, both in terms of engineering talent and collaborating with leading Indian corporates like HDFC Bank, Reliance Jio, Adani and Mahindra Group.

Read more: Economic Times

🗞️ Bite-sized summaries

📈 How’s inflation looking? - India's Consumer Price Index (CPI) inflation for May 2024 eased to a 12-month low of 4.75%, with rural and urban inflation rates at 5.28% and 4.15% respectively. The Consumer Food Price Index inflation also dipped marginally to 8.69%. Meanwhile, the Index of Industrial Production (IIP) grew 5% in April 2024 compared to 4.6% in April 2023, led by robust growth in the mining (6.7%) and electricity (10.2%) sectors. The manufacturing sector expanded at a slower 3.9% pace. The easing inflation and firm industrial growth prompted the RBI governor to state that while the central bank remains vigilant on upside risks, especially from food inflation, the overall inflation-growth balance is moving favourably, allowing monetary policy to continue being disinflationary while aligning inflation to the 4% target durably.

⚖️ Suing no more - Musk Elon Musk has voluntarily dismissed his lawsuit against OpenAI and its CEO Sam Altman, dropping the breach-of-contract claims he filed in March accusing the ChatGPT maker of compromising its original mission to benefit humanity through a multibillion-dollar alliance with Microsoft. No reason was provided for the dismissal filed in a San Francisco court. Musk, who co-founded OpenAI in 2015 but left its board in 2018 over disagreements with Altman, had alleged OpenAI was working on proprietary technology to maximize profits instead of making AI breakthroughs freely available to the public. The lawsuit withdrawal comes amidst Musk's ongoing criticism of OpenAI's partnerships, including a recent one with Apple.

🧑‍🍳 What else is cookin’?

What’s happening in India (and around the world 🌍️)

• Market crash worse than the 2008 recession, warns Economist Harvey Dent.

• PM Modi to come face to face with Trudeau at G7, may take up separatist issue.

• Ixigo IPO subscribed over 98 times on the last day.

• Agritech startup DeHaat posts 40% rise in FY24 operating revenue, halves loss.

🍿 Entertainment, Entertainment, Entertainment

• T20 World Cup:

  • India beat USA by 7 wickets.

  • Sri Lanka vs Nepal match gets abandoned due to rain.

• India's hopes of reaching the third round of the FIFA World Cup end with a 2-1 loss against Qatar.

• India's tennis sensation Sumit Nagal climbed 18 places to 77th place in the latest ATP rankings.

• Dejavu - Rafael Nadal and Carlos Alcaraz to play for Spain in Olympic doubles.

• HS Prannoy, India's world No. 10 shuttler, advances to round 16 of the Australian Open tournament.