Hello,
Apple hits the $3 trillion market cap, yet again!
The iPhonemaker’s shares climbed about 1% on Friday to a new high and passed the $190.73 price required to hit the milestone. In January 2022, Apple became the first company to hit a $3 trillion market cap during intraday trading but failed to close at that level.
In other news, BYJU’S holding company—Think & Learn Pvt Ltd—will consider reducing its stake in its subsidiary Aakash Education Services Limited by up to 20% out of its current 70% stake.
Elsewhere, inflation in Europe has slowed for the second straight month in June.
Consumer prices in the 20 countries that use the euro rose 5.5% this month compared with a year ago, according to the European Union’s statistics agency, down from 6.1% in May. However, core inflation—which strips out volatile food and energy prices—edged up.
Meanwhile, the climate is getting to the point of no return as experts say the target of keeping long-term global warming within 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 Fahrenheit) is moving out of reach.
ICYMI: Meet Taiwan’s new food fad—Godzilla Ramen!
In today’s newsletter, we will talk about
- SUGAR Cosmetics on path to profitability
- Good Capital launches second fund
- Protecting Karnataka’s wildlife
Here’s your trivia for today: What animal was successfully trained to tell the difference between Monet and Picasso?
Beauty
SUGAR Cosmetics on path to profitability
D2C makeup brand SUGAR Cosmetics has improved its bottomline by 15% in FY23. It also brought down its cash burn significantly in the last fiscal, helping it improve profitability prospects.
“We expect to achieve profitability in the next two to three months as we operate at a 75% gross margin,” CEO and Co-founder Vineeta Singh told YourStory.
Growth:
- SUGAR has reduced its expenses on advertising and branding, which accounted for 20%-30% of its total expenses in FY21 and FY22.
- The startup opened its 200th exclusive retail store in Bengaluru earlier this week. It has opened 100 stores across India in the last 12 months alone.
- The company is also looking at a public listing in the next two to three years, subject to market conditions, Singh said.
Top Deals of the Week
Startup: Lenskart
Amount: Rs 200 Cr
Round: Debt
Startup: BillionElectric
Amount: $10M
Round: Seed
Startup: Scapia
Amount: $9M
Round: Seed
Investor
Good Capital launches second fund
Delhi-headquartered venture capital firm Good Capital launched its second fund with a target size of $50 million, along with a greenshoe option of $25 million. The VC firm has already raised $22 million as the first close of the second fund with the participation of limited partners largely from overseas.
AI focus:
- The second fund will focus on investing in startups that leverage AI for distribution, personalisation, or business operations.
- Good Capital aims to invest in about 25-30 startups from various sectors from the second fund.
- It will invest in the range between $100,000 and $1.2 million, taking the position of a lead investor in any startup.
Wildlife
Protecting Karnataka’s wildlife
Wildlife veterinarian Meghana Pemmaiah shot to fame earlier this year following a heroic rescue of a leopardess who was trapped inside a cage for two days. In a career spanning seven years, she has treated birds, mongooses, jackals and snakes from the neighbouring forests of Subrahmanya and Kudremukh.
Nursing animals:
- Pemmaiah’s first rescue operation happened early last year at a village near Karkala in Karnataka when she saved a leopard that had been caught in a snare usually set up for wild boars.
- “When animals’ natural habitats deplete, they enter homes and fields (of human beings) and are killed,” she elaborates.
- She encourages people to call for help instead of killing wild animals that have ventured into their homes.
Meghana Pemmaiah, wildlife veterinarian, Mangaluru
News & updates
- New product: TikTok’s parent company ByteDance is launching a new, free-to-use music production app in closed beta in the US. Called Ripple, it is designed to help musicians and creators create and edit audio in a way that’s similar to portable smart digital audio workstations.
- Dark energy: A new space probe is set to launch Saturday morning. The Euclid telescope will scan billions of galaxies, poring through the past 10 billion years of cosmic time. It will give astrophysicists data to better understand two persistent mysteries: dark matter and dark energy.
- Antitrust: FTC is putting the final touches on its most substantial antitrust case against Amazon, and could file suit in the next few weeks. This will allege that Amazon systematically disadvantages merchants who don’t use certain “optional” services like “Fulfilled by Amazon.”
What animal was successfully trained to tell the difference between Monet and Picasso?
Answer: Pigeon.
In 1995, researchers Shigeru Watanabe, Junko Sakamoto, and Masumi Wakita’s paper called “Pigeons’ discrimination of paintings by Monet and Picasso” showed how these birds successfully learned to discriminate colour slides of paintings by the two artists.
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