Airtel Payments Bank eyes IPO

Hello Reader,

Looks like October just isn't WhatsApp's month. 

The Meta-owned social messaging giant suffered one of its longest-ever outages of about two hours yesterday as many of us scrambled to use other social messaging services. In the same month last year, WhatsApp, along with Facebook and Instagram, suffered a six-hour outage after a major DNS failure.

It's not good news for Google either. 

The Competition Commission of India (CCI) imposed the tech giant with another penalty—punching a hole worth Rs 936 crore—for abusing its dominant position with respect to its Play Store policies. This comes just days after it was fined Rs 1,337 crore for anti-competitive practices.

The gloom continued on the stock markets, with beauty giant Nykaa—one of the last public companies in the Indian startup ecosystem to hold its fort on the bourses—seeing its shares fall below the IPO issue price ahead of the end of the lock-in period for anchor investors.

ICYMI: Sri Lanka may soon be home to South Asia's first Disneyland. The $18 billion investment will be a godsend for the country's economy.

In today’s newsletter, we will talk about 

• Airtel Payments Bank eyes IPO
• Turning brass into designer jewellery
• Becoming an entrepreneur 

Here’s your trivia for today: Which city in the world lies on two continents?

Fintech

Airtel Payments Bank eyes IPO

Airtel Payments Bank (APB), the fintech arm of telecom giant Bharti Airtel, will begin the process of recruiting external investors, MD & CEO Anubrata Biswas said, as a part of a bigger plan to ultimately spin off the subsidiary as a separate entity and hit the public markets. 

During an interview with YourStory, the CEO said the board has been clear about its plans to spin off the subsidiary as a separate entity in the future. 

Key takeaways:

• At present, Bharti Airtel Limited and Bharti Enterprises Limited hold a 70:30 partnership in APB. 
• The fintech subsidiary was the first of 11 players (only six are now operational) to receive a payments bank licence from the Reserve Bank of India, in 2016. 
• The payment bank, which turned profitable in the September quarter of FY22, currently has a revenue of Rs 1,000 crore on an annualised basis and is looking to clock double-digit momentum in the fiscal. 

Startup

Turning brass into designer jewellery

Picture this. Ear studs crafted from brass that came from an automobile, necklaces made from construction equipment scrap, and finger rings carved out of old musical instruments.

This is what Gurugram-based brand Aulerth is doing—fashioning a range of traditional and contemporary jewellery made from recycled brass—to reduce the carbon footprint of jewellery. 

Fine jewellery in store:

• Founder Vivek Ramabhadran believes luxury isn’t about embracing excessiveness but is about being thoughtful and caring towards the environment. 
• It sources brass from scrap yards, automobiles, construction equipment, musical instruments, etc., and gives it a "second life" by treating and repurposing it into designer jewellery.
• It has partnered with Indian designers—Suneet Varma, JJ Valaya, Shivan and Naresh, and Tribe Amrapali.

Entrepreneurship

Becoming an entrepreneur

A survivor of the 2016 horrific honour killing case in Tamil Nadu, Kausalya Shankar continues to speak up against caste-based violence. 

Recently, Kausalya left her government job to become an entrepreneur. She opened a beauty salon Zha in Vellalur, Coimbatore, inaugurated by actor Parvathy Thiruvothu a month ago.

Standing on her feet:

• After completing a “beautician’s course,” Kausalya took a bank loan, pledged her jewels, and borrowed money from a friend to start Zha.
• Her fight against honour killing is a continuous one. She says it’s heartening that there is more awareness and conversations are happening, but there’s still some way to go.
• Kausalya uses every available forum and stage to talk about honour killing and believes such cases need sensitisation at all levels, even among the police.

News & updates

• Slide back: Apple Inc is cutting back production of iPhone 14 Plus and is increasing the output of iPhone 14 Pro due to lukewarm demand, market research firm TrendForce said. This could lead to a 14% year-on-year drop in production to 52 million units.
• Slippery slope: Shares of Chinese companies listed in the US dropped sharply after President Xi Jinping was chosen to serve an unprecedented third term. The Invesco Golden Dragon China ETF plunged 14.5% to hit its lowest level since 2009. 
• Dark days ahead: International Energy Agency (IEA) head Faith Birol said the world was in the middle of "the first truly global energy crisis" amid the Ukraine conflict and a potential rebound in China's fuel demand.

What you should watch out for

• Smartphone and accessory maker Nothing will launch a True Wireless Earbuds called Nothing Ear (Stick) on Myntra.
• Satcom Industry Association India will host a three-day Indian Space Congress in Delhi.

Which city in the world lies on two continents?

Answer: Istanbul. It’s Turkey's largest city and straddles the Bosporus Strait, lying in both Europe and Asia.

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