Play-to-earn games of Decentral Games received a massive boost following investment from Polygon

Polygon, a popular name in the blockchain segment, has recently made an announcement that it is investing in Decentral Games to boost its effort in play-to-earn games. Play-to-earn is a well-known model in the gaming segment where the players will play games to get rewards or real money. Gamers who play Axie Infinity have been earning NFTs that can be sold for real money. People in countries like the Philippines are earning good money well above the minimum wage by playing the Axie Infinity game.

As of now, that is just one game that is showing immense potential, and Decentral Games is going after it. On the other hand, Polygon has now created a scaling solution for Ethereum. This shows that the company has created a technology that can offload transactions directly from Ethereum as the platform is expensive and slow. Polygon was founded in 2017, and since then, the company has built capabilities to process transactions from the blockchain that powers cryptocurrencies like Ethereum. The scaling solution of Polygon has garnered more than 500 Dapps under its hood and manages more than six million transactions daily. The latest announcement from Decentral Games comes right after a string of game launches that were backed by prominent partners.

 

 

 

French Energy Giant Totalenergies to Invest a Whooping Sum of $27 Billion in Iraq

French energy giant TotalEnergies, in a recent press meet, has stated that it is planning to invest a huge sum of $27 billion in Iraq in a 25-year deal which will, in turn, boost its position in the country. The deal will include various investments in energy projects, including seawater into oil fields to enhance the amount of oil recovered, a natural-gas processing plant, and a solar farm. The company has said that there will be an initial investment of $10 billion.

These projects would help TotalEnergies to improve Iraq's electricity supply. Also, Iraq is already facing severe scarcity of drinkable water, especially in the summer; this project will allow them to overcome these issues. Also, it will help them to reduce the dependency on Iranian natural gas. Besides, TotalEnergies have planned this deal tactically at a time when oil and gas companies are starting to reassess their portfolios to address concerns over their carbon emissions. This deal will also focus on helping Iraq to reduce high carbon emissions.

 

Barclays Announces over $400 million for its operation in India

 

Barclays has announced that it will be pumping in $400+ million (Rs. 3,000 crore) for its growth in India. This investment from the multinational banking behemoth will be targeting the bank's corporate and investment banking and private clients businesses.

With this investment Barclays' total investment capital in India will increase to Rs. 8,300 crore. The bank is clearly enamored by the potential in the country. It has built a splendid presence in the country where it offers best-in-class financing, advisory and risk management businesses within the Investment Bank, the entire suite of Corporate Banking capabilities, including cash management and trade finance.

“The capital infusion in the Bank reflects the success and strong track record of our India franchise built over the last three decades. We have ambitious growth aspirations, and the investment will help accelerate that as we look to leverage the attractive opportunities that the present situation offers,” said Jaideep Khanna, Head of Barclays, Asia Pacific and Country CEO, India.

Barclays was named as the Best Bond House in India by the IFR Asia Awards in 2019 for its dominance in debt capital markets and recognized by the industry for its ability to deliver offshore financings for a wide range of clients. The bank's Corporate Banking franchise has also been recently recognized with five awards in The Asset Triple A Treasury, Trade, SSC (Sustainable Supply Chain) and Risk Management Awards 2021 in India.

 

Singapore-based Cloud Delivery Platform Parcel Perform Raises $20 million

 

The cloud-based delivery experience platform Parcel Perform announced that it has secured $20 million in Series A funding. The round was led by Cambridge Capital, with new investor SoftBank Ventures Asia. Existing investors Wavemaker Partners and Investible joined the round too.

The Singapore-based company manages over 100 million parcel tracking updates every day and provides real-time visibility of tracking data. It also helps businesses to increase customer lifetime value by up to 40%. The company has seen fantastic growth, with its revenues growing five times since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“We are thrilled that our investors recognize our ability to build a sustainable and profitable business by serving some of the most sophisticated enterprise customers worldwide to help them boost their customer satisfaction online,” said Dr. Arne Jeroschewski, CEO and Co-founder of Parcel Perform. 

Parcel Perform will be using the fresh funding to support its global expansion and recruitment efforts. The company will also use the funding to build its technology offerings and invest in AI solutions, which will include scaling its proprietary ‘Date of Arrival’ prediction engine which allows customers to know precisely when their parcels will arrive. Further, the company also plans to establish a regional headquarters in North America and grow its global employee count to 150 by the end of this year.

 

Popular investment firm Aretha Capital Partners is gearing up to launch a new real estate platform to ease buying and selling

Aretha Capital Partners, a popular name in the investment segment, has recently made an announcement that it will be launching a platform called Novyy.com. The new platform is expected to be a unique integrated platform aimed at global real estate investing and buying. The main motto of the platform is to democratize the retail real estate segment so that there is reduced friction while the buyers have to go through various stages. The cost is also expected to reduce, and the fees will also be lower by almost 50-70 percent for the buyers.

As of now, Novyy.com has properties listed in the UK, India, and Key European markets with a valuation that is the same for any buyers globally. New features are expected to be added soon to identify and fulfill the requests. The integration for real estate was long overdue, and it was left unaddressed for a long time.  Heft price and multiple prices offered for the same property was creating a huge gap in the buying and selling process of the real estate. More than 100 million people are expected to buy homes in the coming decade, and half of the same are expected to be in the emerging market.

 

Ronnie Screwvala-led upGrad Achieves Unicorn Status

Yet another Indian education tech startup has achieved a unicorn status. This time it is the Ronnie Screwvala-led upGrad, which offers higher education and upskilling courses in data science, machine learning, artificial intelligence, blockchain, finance, programming and law in collaboration with universities such as Michigan State University, the IIT Madras and IIT Delhi, and Swiss School of Business Management, Geneva.

The six-year old startup has achieved the unicorn status after raising $185 million in its latest funding round, which was led by Singapore’s Temasek. Among the participants in the round were World Bank’s International Finance Corporation and IIFL.

“We are pleased with the investor interest ever since we opened up for fundraise and had our maiden raise from Temasek, followed by IFC and IIFL in the last 60 days,” said Ronnie Screwvala, co-founder and chairperson of upGrad, in a statement.

Prior to the latest funding round, upGrad was valued at $600 million. Now, its valuations stands at $1.2 billion. Screwvala has said that upGrad will use the funding to explore merger and acquisition opportunities.

There have been many edtech startups based out of India that have seen fantastic growth in the recent quarters, including the famed Byju’s and Unacademy. Now, upGrad with its latest round joins the ranks of such soaring edtech companies from India.

 

HGS to Divest its Healthcare Services Biz

Hinduja Global Solutions Limited has announced that it will be divesting its healthcare services business. The healthcare services biz will be bought by Baring Private Equity Asia for a reported $1,200 million. Baring Private Equity Asia is one of the largest private alternative investment firms in Asia.

The HSG healthcare services delivers solutions that support payer, providers, laboratories, durable medical equipment firms and pharmaceutical companies. These services cover the entire lifecycle of a payer organization, including member acquisition, enrollment & billing, benefit set-up, claims adjudication, provider credentialing & data management, payment integrity & financial recovery, grievance & appeals, provider & member engagement, prior authorizations, case management and population health management, and the various functions in the revenue cycle of a provider organization.

“Our Healthcare Services business has steadily grown over the years. We reached a stage where we could recommend to promoter to divest stake in this business to unlock value for all HGS stakeholders. We will use the generated funds to strategically invest for the future growth of the organization. We see a long-term value and benefit to HGS in doing so. HGS will continue to focus on aggressively expanding its CES and Digital businesses in line with our goal to transform itself into a "digitally-enabled customer experience (CX) company", said Partha DeSarkar, Global CEO, HGS.

With over 20,000 employees on its payroll across India, Philippines, the US, and Jamaica, the company recorded $400 million in revenues in FY2021. In a statement, HGS said that post the completion of transaction, HGS will transfer all client contracts, employees, and assets, including infrastructure related to the Healthcare Services business.

 

 

Huawei Unveils Its Plan to Commit $100Mfor Startups in APAC

At the inaugural HUAWEI CLOUD Spark Founders Summit that took place simultaneously in Singapore and Hong Kong, Huawei has announced that it will be investing $100 million on the startup ecosystem in the Asia Pacific region for the next three years. This investment will go towards its Spark Program in the Asia Pacific region, which aims to build a sustainable startup ecosystem.

Huawei also announced that this program will focus on developing startup ecosystem in Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Vietnam, and the Philippines. The company aims to recruit a total of 1,000 startups into the Spark accelerator program and is looking to shape 100 of them into scaleups.

“Startups and SMEs are the innovators, disruptors, and pioneers of our times. 34 years ago, Huawei was a startup with just 5,000 dollars of registered capital. Recently, we have been thinking: How can we leverage our experience and resources to help more startups address their challenges? Doing so would allow them to seize the opportunities posed by digital transformation, achieve business success, and develop more innovative products and solutions for the world,” said Huawei Senior Vice President and Board Member Catherine Chen.

Last year, Huawei launched the Spark Program in Asia Pacific to work with local governments, well-known VC firms, leading incubators, and top universities to build support platforms for startups. Currently, 40 startups are participating in this program.

 

Spain invests big to boost the production of Electric Car

The Spanish government has said that it will be investing 4.3 billion euros ($5.1 billion) from its share of European pandemic recovery funds to revamp and boost its automobile industry. Spain aims to steer the manufacturing of electric vehicles (EV) and their components, Spain’s Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez stated. He also said that this investment will be a real revolution for the Spanish economy, which will bring an estimated 19 billion euros ($22.5 billion) in additional private investment.

Spain’s left-wing coalition government is aiming to inject the money in various automobile segments like the car manufacturing chain, from lithium extraction to electric battery cell assembly lines. The country plans to transform Spain's automobile sector with the 140 billion euros ($166 billion) that the country is expected to receive in the next six years from the EU's Next Generation funds.

The Spanish Cabinet is set to approve the automobile plan. With this the automobile companies will be able to apply for funding immediately after, with the first disbursements, which is expected to arrive in September.The Prime Minister also said that the country is investing one billion euros in electric vehicle manufacturing unit and another billion euros will go to install new public electric plug-in points.

 

Amazon Expected to Surpass Walmart as America's Largest Retailer

Recent reports and statistical analysis have reported that Amazon will surpass Walmart in total merchandise sales in the US. Besides, Walmart is growing its sales volume by more than 20 percent every year. An April report from e-commerce data company Edge reported that Amazon wouldn't pass Walmart until 2025. But J.P. Morgan analyst Doug Anmuth thinks Amazon will pass Walmart in US sales by the end of next year.

Amazon currently holds a market share of approximately 40 percent of all online sales in the US, which puts its gross merchandise volume to around $327 billion. Also, Amazon has a "small" physical retail operation that's brought in over $15 billion in revenue over the last four quarters. This makes the total retail volume around $340 billion. In contrast, Walmart US and Sam's Club generated a combined income of $439 billion over the last four quarters. Walmart also operates a third-party merchant marketplace.

So, as of now, Amazon is still about $100 billion behind Walmart. That's a big gap to make up in just seven quarters. But there are slight chances that Amazon's gross merchandise volume, excluding its physical stores, will climb to $377 billion this year and reach $457 billion in 2022. Henceforth, there is still a lot of room for e-commerce to take a share of total retail sales, which will lead to sustainable double-digit growth.

 

 

Moneta Appoints Aoifinn Devitt to Become the First Female CIO to Manage the Firm’s Portfolio

Moneta Group Investment Advisors has appointed Aoifinn Devitt as its new Chief Information Officer (CIO). With this move, Ms. Devitt becomes the first female CIO to look after the company's registered investment adviser (RIA)'s worth $27.4 billion in assets under management (AUM). The Missouri-based investment company is also expanding to Chicago, on which Devitt will be working.

Prior to joining Moneta, Devitt served at Federated Hermes, where she was head of investment for Ireland and played a crucial role in developing investment management oversight processes for Hermes Fund Managers Ireland Limited. She was also the CIO of the $2.6 billion Policemen's Annuity and Benefit Fund of Chicago. She also founded Clontarf Capital, which is pan-alternatives research and consulting firm.

"I don't believe in dictating strategies, and I will not be excluding anything. I am excited to bring my alternative expertise," Devitt said. She also said that her primary priority going into the job would be to make sure that the portfolio is resilient against rising inflation. And she will be predominantly be focusing on good governance, ensuring a company does right by employees.