Sequoia Capital joined other institutional investors like Tiger Global, Uber Holdings and Moore Strategic Ventures who have partially or fully offloaded their shareholdings in Zomato. Sequoia has been invested
in Zomato since 2013. It had first offloaded 66 million shares last year post listing. Now it has sold another 105 million shares in last week of August 2022, taking total number of shares sold to 171 million. Its stake in Zomato has fallen from 6.41% to 4.40%. Sequoia had also got Zomato shares from its
holdings in Blinkit.
GDP growth for Q1FY23 came in at 13.5%, nearly 270 bps below RBI expectations. Gross value added (GVA) from Agriculture, Forestry and Fishing rose 4.5% in the June 2022 quarter. Gross Value Added
(GVA) in the June 2022 quarter grew 12.7%. This was triggered by a surge in consumption spending and capital investments. This growth is appreciable as it does not have the support of low base effect.
Construction activity fell in the quarter and that was one of the main reasons for the lower than expected GDP growth.
The Office of the Economic Advisor also announced the core sector growth of 8 sectors for July 2022. It actually dropped to a 6-month low of 4.5% in July 2022, compared to 3.2% in June. While crude oil and natural gas output fell on a yoy basis, the growth in key infrastructure sectors like cement and electricity tapered to around 2%. The sequential core sector growth was down -2.3% for July 2022, indicating at high frequency pressure on infrastructure. For first 4 months of FY23, core sector growth stood at 11.5%
yoy.
At the end of July 2022, the central government fiscal deficit had touched 20.5% of annual target. This is slightly lower on a yoy comparison. What is more gratifying is that after a long gap, Indian government reported fiscal surplus for the month of July 2022. Fiscal deficit is reflective of the government borrowings from the market. Government receipts at Rs.785,000 crore accounted for 34.4% of full year estimates while the total expenditure was at 28.6% of full year estimates. For FY23, fiscal deficit is
pegged at 6.4%.
Inflation in the Euro currency zone is going from bad to worse as it hit 9.1% amidst rising energy prices. Russia had shut its flows to Europe after the latter had supported the US in imposing sanctions on Russia over the Ukraine war. The August inflation at 9.1% is higher than 8.9% reported in July. The last time such record high levels of inflation were seen in the Euro zone was way back in 1997. Energy has very strong externalities so while energy inflation surged to 38.3%, even food prices inflation has risen to
10.6% levels.
SpiceJet seems to be getting into a deep financial mess after it reported widening of losses for the June 2022 quarter to Rs789 crore. To worsen matters, the CFO Sanjeev Taneja, has put in his papers. In the last few months, SpiceJet has faced a cash crunch and a series of mid-air near mishaps. The airline has been badly hit by high fuel prices and a fall in the rupee. Total revenues for the quarter nearly doubled yoy to Rs2,478 crore. Record high ATF prices and depreciating rupee were major contributors to the huge loss.
The proposed merger between Sony and Zee Entertainment appears to have run into problems with the Competition Commission of India (CCI). The CCI view is that by creating a $10 billion TV conglomerate, the deal could potentially hurt competition. While CCI has not given any judgment, it has sent a notice to Zee and Sony that further investigation was warranted. The merger was supposed to challenge rivals like Walt Disney. Normally, some structural changes are enough, else it could lead to a prolonged
approval process.
Exactly one year after the ban on issue of fresh credit cards was lifted from HDFC Bank, it has regained chunk of the market share it had lost. In the last 1 year, HDFC Bank has increased its share of spends by 190 basis points to 28.4%. However, this is still lower than the 30.67% share of spends that HDFC Bank had commanded prior to the embargo. A series of tech glitches had led to the RBI imposing a ban on HDFC Bank issuing fresh cards in December 2020. ICICI Bank and SBI had gained share during the ban
period.