Happy morning, Munchers! 🙏

As always, here is your daily dose of the news that matters, from Wall Street to Dalal Street - in 4 minutes and 58 seconds.

Yesterday, Careem supercharged their superapp, Reliance took a sip of the cola market, and China dropped a GPT rival. 🔥

Let’s dive in.

What’s hot, what’s not?

Market Commentary

• The March inflation report looms ahead and markets are super choppy in wait.

• Prices for stuff sold digitally declined for the seventh straight month. Source? Adobe has a Digital Price Index which tracks e-com and software.

• Bitcoin also climbed past 30k for the first time since June 2022. A little fodder for crypto bros to feel better about themselves.

Story Roundup

1 - Careem slaps $400mn of funding into their super-app. 💸

Careem was the Middle East’s first ever unicorn. They also built the Arab world’s finest ride hailing app. Then they got acquired in the MENA region’s biggest ever technology transaction (for a cool $3.1bn).

But it looks like there’s still more to do.

They just raised $400 million from Etisalat (the UAE govt.’s state-run telco) to shake the market up with their Super App.

A Super App is literally what it says on the box.

Careem is gonna combine everything they do - food delivery, car rentals, P2P payments - into one sleek app.

They’ve not got a fat wallet to lean on, and they’re gonna be splashing tons of cash on creating more verticals (cuz the super app has to be super 🤣)

Electric. ⚡

2 - Ambani gets ready to reshuffle the cola market. 🥤

Mukesh Ambani is bringing back “the great Indian taste” with Campa Cola, and he’s doing it in his classic Reliance way.

They’ve been hunting for long-term cola manufacturers and are getting ready to go ham with their pricing.

A 2L Campa is gonna be 49 INR - about 1/3rd cheaper than a 2L Coke/Pepsi, which clocks in at 79-89 INR.

Reliance is going to price their product at a point where other firms simply can’t afford to.

It’s a classic business tactic - bleed your competition till they have no money left in the bank.

Campa got shut down because of American firms like Coke entering the Indian market and blowing local brands away with their jazzy flavors and millions of marketing dollars.

But Ambani baba wants to fizz up the market. 🙈

3 - China drops their ChatGPT rival. 🗡️

Computing phenom ChatGPT has been the talk of the town for as far as the brain can remember.

But it looks like China has a challenger ready.

SenseTime Group - a little-known company backed by Alibaba - showed off a whole new suite of AI products.

This flashy new toy is called SenseChat, and it can do all sorts of fun stuff (exactly like GPT).

You’ll be able to make stories with it, write exam papers with it, and annotate code with it.

SenseTime has a vision for a future where 80% of all development related work is done by AI, and humans just apply the final touches and polish it all up.

The space race was the 20th century thing, now it’s the AI race. 💀

4 - British homebuyers try downsizing. 📉

Higher mortgage rates are biting the people who need relief the most.

First-time buyers in the UK are going for smaller houses to offset the bumped-up payments.

Most first-time homeowners scooped up one or two-bed properties in Q1.

Buying homes is still super popular, since people want that sense of security, and it’s also cheaper (depending on where you are).

But the way markets are going, not for long. 😭

5 - Taiwan trembles a little. 😓

Last week, Taiwan’s president decided to take a cheeky trip to the US.

China did not like this.

They conducted some of their biggest military exercises around Taiwanese land.

The crazy part? These were “precision strike simulations”.

91 aircraft and 12 warships decided to roam around Taiwanese borders and give them a little scare.

Check out this video - it’s a Chinese government animation.

High-school bullying with billions of lives at stake. 💀

Hope you enjoyed this issue of Market Munch. If you’ve got any feedback - good or bad (😏) you can hit reply to this email and I'll get a ping in my inbox. Thanks a ton for reading!

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Cheers, and have a lovely day. 🙏

- Aryaansh ⚡