STARTUP DIGEST: Nykaa to make D-Street debut tomorrow, CRED targets Rs 100-cr ESOP buyback for FY21, Meesho top downloaded Indian app, says report, Facebook can pursue malware lawsuit against NSO

Nykaa’s public issue comprises a fresh issue of shares worth Rs 630 crore and an offer-for-sale (OFS) worth Rs 4,721 crore. Ahead of its initial public offer (IPO), the company had raised over Rs 2,300 from anchor investors.

The company aims to use these funds for expansion, setting up new retail stores and warehouses. It also plans to repay its debt, which could bring down interest costs and shore up profitability.

Digital payments major Paytm’s IPO has been subscribed 48 percent (at the time of writing) on the second day of bidding, receiving bids for 2.34 crore equity shares against the offer size of 4.83 crore shares.

The portion set aside for retail investors was subscribed 1.23 times, while the reserved portion of non-institutional investors was subscribed 5 percent, and qualified institutional buyers put in bids for 46 percent shares of the portion set aside for them.

Paytm opened its IPO for subscription on November 8. The Rs 18,300-crore IPO is the largest-ever public issue in the history of the Indian capital markets.

Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) firm Freshworks, which recently listed on Nasdaq, has initiated a share-sale worth more than $500 million from top management and employees, in one of the largest employee stock option schemes in India.

As per reports, Freshworks plans to sell 13.6 million shares (13,555,142 shares) of Class A common stock from over 3,300 shareholders, the company said in a filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

Top selling shareholders include founder Girish Mathrubootham, who is selling about 24.22 lakh shares, chief financial officer Tyler Sloat, who is selling about 4.5 lakh shares, and chief revenue officer Jose Morales, who is selling about 3 lakh shares, the reports added.

The company made its public debut on US-based Nasdaq in September after it raised over $1.03 billion as a part of the listing.

Fintech unicorn CRED has announced that the cumulative ESOP buyback under its ‘accelerated wealth programme’ will be up to Rs 100 crore this year.

All the CRED team members who have vested options as of October 31, 2021, will be eligible to participate in the buyback event and sell a portion of their vested shares. CRED’s accelerated wealth programme was launched in August as an additional revenue stream for its team members.

“Our growth over the past three years has been possible because of the collective conviction and contribution of the team. Rewarding the commitment of our team members involves providing them with ample opportunities to create wealth — helping them realise their financial goals and invest in their future,” the company said in its latest newsletter.

Last month, CRED raised $251 million in Series E funding from Tiger Global and Falcon Edge. There were two new investors, Marshall Wace and Steadfast, besides DST Global, Insight Partners, Coatue, Sofina, RTP, and Dragoneer. The funding round had valued the company at $4.01 billion.

Social commerce platform Meesho has beaten Facebook to become the most downloaded Indian app, with 25 million downloads in the month of October, according to data by SensorTower, which was seen by Business Today.

Facebook, which now comes under the newly renamed Meta Platform, reported 23 million downloads in the same month. Data collated by SensorTower includes downloads for the App Store and Google Play worldwide between October 1-31.

Meesho registered 750 per cent growth in users over the last year during its flagship festive sale event – Maha Indian Shopping League from October 6-9. About 60 per cent of the total demand was driven by Tier 4+ markets, including remote locations like Khawzhwal and Sopore, the report added.

Conversational artificial intelligence (AI) platform Niki is shutting down operations, according to Entrackr.

This development comes several months after the start-up had announced its overseas expansion plans in February.

“Niki.ai has discontinued its services for the past month due to several reasons including lack of funds,” sources told Entrackr. The company has laid off most of its employees in the past several months, the report added.

Niki used to provide a virtual assistant that allowed people to transact online through voice command across four languages: Hindi, Bengali, Tamil and English.

Bitcoin and ether hit fresh all-time highs on Tuesday, extending their rally from a day earlier.

Bitcoin’s price at one point rose above $68,000, eclipsing a previous record set in late October. The world’s biggest digital currency climbed as high as $68,521 before easing slightly to $67,935.

It was last up 3% in the past 24 hours as of 4:30 a.m. ET, according to Coin Metrics data.

Ether, the native currency of ethereum’s blockchain, notched a record high of $4,840, surpassing the $4,800 level for the first time ever.

The token traded about 2% higher in the last 24 hours at a price of $4,814.

These record-breaking moves come amid a wider rally in the crypto market. So-called “ethereum killers” solana and cardano are up 21% and 16% respectively in the last seven days.

A US appeals court said Facebook can pursue a lawsuit accusing Israel’s NSO Group of exploiting a bug in its WhatsApp messaging app to install malware allowing the surveillance of 1,400 people, including journalists, human rights activists and dissidents.

According to Reuters, in a 3-0 decision on Monday, the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco rejected privately-owned NSO’s claim it was immune from being sued because it had acted as a foreign government agent.

Facebook, now known as Meta Platforms, sued NSO for an injunction and damages in October 2019, accusing it of accessing WhatsApp servers without permission six months earlier to install its Pegasus malware on victims’mobile devices.

NSO has argued that Pegasus helps law enforcement and intelligence agencies fight crime and protect national security.

Twitter has added a warning label to an anime video shared by US Republican lawmaker Paul Gosar, depicting him swinging swords at President Joe Biden and killing Democratic congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

Twitter said the video violated its “hateful conduct” policy and restricted engagement with the tweet, blocking the ability to like, reply or retweet it.

However, the social media giant said in a notification attached above the tweet that it had determined “it may be in the public’s interest for the Tweet to remain accessible.”

“As is standard with this notice, engagements with the Tweet will be limited,” Twitter said in an email, seen by Reuters.

The 90-second video shared by Gosar on Sunday appears to be an altered version of a Japanese animated series and is interspersed with real-life footage of US Border Patrol officers rounding up migrants at the US-Mexico border.

Four astronauts safely returned on Monday from a record six-month NASA science mission aboard the International Space Station, splashing down with their SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule in the Gulf of Mexico at the end of a daylong flight home.

As per Reuters, the Dragon vehicle, dubbed Endeavour, parachuted into the sea off the Florida coast as planned just after 10:30 p.m. EST on Monday, following a re-entry descent through Earth’s atmosphere carried live by a NASA webcast.

Real-time infrared thermal video imaging captured a glimpse of the capsule streaking like a meteor through the night sky over the Gulf minutes before splashdown.

Applause was heard from the flight control center as the four main parachutes inflated above the capsule, seen drifting down toward the Gulf surface and slowing to about 15 miles per hour (24 kph) before dropping gently into the calm sea.

“Endeavour, on behalf of SpaceX, welcome home to planet Earth,” a voice from the SpaceX flight control center in suburban Los Angeles was heard telling the crew as a safe splashdown was confirmed.

The return capped 199 full days in orbit, the longest ever for an entire US-launched crew, according to Kathy Lueders, associate NASA chief for space operations. It surpassed the previous 168-day record set by the predecessor SpaceX-NASA mission earlier this year, she said.

SoftBank Group Corp shares jumped 10.5 percent on Tuesday, the first trading session after the Japanese conglomerate said it would spend up to 1 trillion yen ($8.8 billion) buying back almost 15 percent of its shares, Reuters reported.

The company announced the buyback, long speculated by the market, after it revealed its quarterly earnings crashed to a loss amid a decline in the share prices of its portfolio companies and a regulatory crackdown in China.

SoftBank’s shares closed at 6,808 yen in its biggest daily rise in 11 months, lifting the group’s market capitalisation above $100 billion. Tuesday’s trading volume was more than twice the 30-day average.

The buyback is SoftBank’s second-largest after a record ¥2.5-trillion buyback launched during the depths of the COVID-19 pandemic last year. Shares of the tech group quadrupled during that buyback, but have since fallen 40 percent from a peak in May.

China’s Tencent Music Entertainment Group beat analysts’ estimates for third-quarter profit on Monday, as efforts to bolster content attracted more paying users to its Spotify-like music streaming platform.

Online music paying users jumped 37.7 percent to 71.2 million from a year earlier, while it increased by 5 million from the prior quarter, Reuters reported.

The results come amid a regulatory crackdown in China on sectors from tech to education and property. The company’s parent, Tencent Holdings, said in August it had ended all exclusive music copyright agreements after regulators barred it from such deals.

Excluding items, Tencent Music earned 0.61 yuan per American Depository Share (ADS), topping estimates of 0.49 yuan per ADS, according to Refinitiv IBES.

Total revenue rose 3 percent to 7.805 billion yuan ($1.22 billion) in the third quarter, while analysts had expected 7.845 billion yuan. Profit attributable to equity holders of the company fell to 740 million yuan, from 1.13 billion yuan a year earlier.

PayPal reported revenue growth for the third quarter of 13 percent and said it’s teaming up with Amazon to let US customers pay with Venmo at checkout, starting in 2022, according to CNBC.

However, after initially rising in extended trading, PayPal shares reversed course and fell 5 percent after the company issued a revenue forecast for next year that missed analysts’ estimates.

Total payment volume rose 26 percent to $310 billion for the quarter ended September 30, and the company added 13.3 million net new active accounts, bringing the total to 416, PayPal said.

PayPal’s Venmo app, which began supporting cryptocurrency services in April, saw payment volume jump 36 percent to $60 billion. Customers in the US can buy, sell, and check out with digital currencies. With its network of 33 million retailers, PayPal’s crypto ambitions have positioned the company as a rival to Coinbase, the country’s most popular crypto exchange.

Starting next year, PayPal users will be able to make purchases on Amazon.com and the Amazon mobile shopping app with their Venmo accounts.