What’s up?
Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group Inc. is investing more than $700 million in Southeast Asian ride-hailing giant Grab. It’s a three-way deal in which everyone gets what they currently lack.
Why should I know?
- For Grab: 1) Pick up an only-online banking license in Singapore which requires $1.15B and (2) Get access to the wide regional network (Indonesia, Thailand, Philippines) of the deep-pocketed MUFG
- For MUFG: Get out of the local pressure as negative interest rate bites at home. Backing Grabs will help MUFG to market a wide range of its financial services from loans to insurance to Grab’s users
- For Softbank: A sigh of relief all around as its core start-up in Vision Fund portfolio will not need cash-feeding any more. That’s one less mouth to feed in the wake of disastrous bets like WeWork
What’s up?
A writer in Dealstreetasia pointed out the position of Luckin in the severe acute respiratory syndrome outbreak
Zooming out
- Advantages: (1) The delivery model that proves more resilient than other competitors like Starbucks- who positions itself as selling not only coffee, but experience. (2) The strong financial position after additional share sales and convertible bond offering.
- Disadvantages: (1) Travel restriction; (2) Manufacturer halts output and (3) Extended holiday
What’s up?
Microsoft Team reported 20M DAU at the end of 2019, far from the number 12M of Slack. Also, Slack’s stock has languished over the last eight months. It signifies what Team’s CEO said “When you start to commoditize features, best of integration will outdo best-of-bread”
Why should I know?
Microsoft, apart from Team, has a long list of other prominent software in the business world: Office 365 and Azure Cloud Services. What about Slack? Just itself. This difference led to the growth gap in the last year, and the shift in power from standing-alone start-ups like Slack to tech giants like Microsoft and Salesforce
Salesforce acquired Tableau last year to give customers of its other sales and marketing tools a fresh option for making sense of their data, also acquired Vlocity last Tuesday to add marketing-oriented no-code tools to its arsenal. Workday acquired procurement software startup Scout for $540 million to bulk up its product lineup. VMware bought Carbon Black for $2.1 billion to add security services to its growing portfolio of cloud assets.
This could be the start of a new wave of consolidation in this space.
Huy Luu's business blog 