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Rahul Mathur

@Rahul_J_Mathur

Jun 23

Bata shoes are “Made In India” today, but Bata was created in the Czech Republic 130+ years ago!

Bata started operations in India 40 years after its founding.

It appointed an Indian as its CEO for the 1st time in 2020 (125 years after founding!).

For many of us who went to school in the 80s, 90s and 2000s - Bata was the shoe brand you HAD to wear. Of course it is an Indian brand, right?

Turns out, not at all. ⤵️

1️⃣ Bata’s humble beginnings

On 21 September 1894 in the town of Zlín (modern day Czech Republic), Tomáš, Antonín and Anna Baťa put up ~$12,000 (in today’s money) to buy 2 sewing machines and hire 10 workers to launch the Bata Shoe Company.

They quickly pivoted from leather shoes to canvas shoes (the white ones we wore in school in India!)

1914: Turning point was Govt contracts in WW1 - they started to build “Baťaville” factory towns

I’ll skip all the European tragedy & jump straight from Zlín to Calcutta:

2️⃣ Bata’s journey in India

In 1931, Bata Shoe Co Pvt Ltd was incorporated in Calcutta. They began domestic manufacturing exactly a year later!

In June 1973, Bata did is IPO in India - LIC and UTI bought shares in the company as part of the listing.

The share price at IPO was ~₹15 (as per today’s stock split) - check the Bonus section to see the returns since inception 😉

In 1988, Bata signed a deal with Adidas to manufacture & sell their sports range in India! This deal ended in 1996

In 1997, Bata then signed a deal with Nike to sell their shoes in Bata stores - which seems to have ended in 2005 when Nike came to India with its own retail stores 😂

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Rahul Mathur

@Rahul_J_Mathur

Jun 21

We (India’s youth) are very different from our parents

They have a savings mindset - gold, real estate, no credit card, home loan etc. Money was saved for tomorrow’s betterment (retirement, children’s education etc).

We have a spending mindset - MFs, many credit cards, fancy sneakers, international travel. Money is spent for today’s experiences & indulgences.

These are anecdotes.

Here’s some data which shows how India’s youth spends money ⤵️

1️⃣Where are we spending? Hint: 40% on EMIs

Discretionary spending in India is a luxury.

40% of our spends are towards (financial) obligations e.g. home loan, car loan, education loan.

Btw, obligation spending is is HIGHER than necessities - utilities, groceries, medical.

Necessities is ~ 32% of spending. Discretionary comes in at the end with ~29% of spending.

Note: If you can’t relate to the above, consider yourself very privileged.

2️⃣How are we able to spend so much?

Dipping into our savings – Financial assets held by households is now 5.1% of GDP in 2024 viz 7.2% in 2022

Taking more loans – Loan outstanding (PL) is now ₹55.3 L crore ; YoY growth of 13.7%

Earning a lot more – Salaries increased ~9.1% YoY from 2019 to 2024; beating inflation.

Giving in to our impulse - Quick Everything because we’re chronically online – Smartphones now in hands of 72% of Indian population

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Rahul Mathur

@Rahul_J_Mathur

Jun 17

Jio will be launching 3 Mutual Funds in India shortly which are using Blackrock's ALADDIN model.

ALADDIN literally stands for Asset, Liability, and Debt and Derivative Investment Network

In total, ~200 global institutions use the analytics platform which represents ~₹1,750 lakh crore in AUM.

First time that ALADDIN will be launched in India by any institution:

Jio Financial Services got off to a slow start post the spin-out from RIL Industries but it is slowly gathering momentum:

1. Converted to a Core Investment Company from regular NBFC
2. Launched Jio Finance super app
3. Launching Jio Blackrock AMC
4. Launching Jio Blackrock MF

For Blackrock, this is homecoming in India:

In '08, they entered India by acquiring a 40% stake in DSP Merrill Lynch Mutual Fund.

However, in '18, they exited the JV by selling its 40% stake back to the DSP Group.

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Rahul Mathur

@Rahul_J_Mathur

Jun 1

I read the entire 340 page "AI Trends" report by legendary investor Mary Meeker which was released 48 hours ago.

Mary used to publish the famous annual “Internet Trends” before most of us were born - her insights are invaluable.

Sharing 10 takeaways from this report ⤵️

Index for this post

(1) About Mary Meeker
(2) About Bond Capital
(3) Fav Quote from report
(4) India’s AI usage --“Jai Jio”
(5) Innovators Dilemma RIP
(6) ChatGPT use - Engagement Trap
(7) ChatGPT is under attack
(8) AI has low APRU (for now)
(9) Goodbye Vertical SaaS?
(10) Next Billion Users will be AI native?

About Mary Meeker 👩‍💼

Known as the ”Queen of the Internet”

Was part of the Morgan Stanley TMT team which led the Netscape IPO (which kicked off the dot com boom in 1996). Bill Gurley was her colleague!

She published the 1st edition of the “Internet Trends Report” in 1996 - a 322 page deep-dive into the web’s potential.

She published the ITR every year & called out several trends early:

(a) 1996 → Explosion of online population (X10 by ‘00)

(b) 2000 → Online ads > print ads (happened in ‘04)

(c) 2008 → Mobile dominance (took place in ‘14)

She joined Kleiner Perkins in 2010 to lead their Growth Fund → invested in Facebook, Spotify, Square , Twitter, and Snap

In 2018, KP Growth Fund spun out & re-branded as BOND Capital.

She paused writing the Internet Trends report in 2019 to focus on building BOND - but she’s back to long form & data driving writing w/ the AI Trends Report 2025

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Rahul Mathur

@Rahul_J_Mathur

Mar 29

LIC owns ~4.9% of CSK — a 30X return over a 18 year holding period (>> 20% XIRR) — the story behind this is quite fascinating:

India Cements paid ~₹395 crore (over 10 years) to buy the CSK franchise — it is probably their best capital allocation decision to date: CSK is now worth as much as India Cements 😉

Quick history before we cover how LIC landed up with the stake ⤵️

(1) In Feb ‘08, India Cements offered $91M for CSK — $1 = ₹43.4 then — i.e. ~₹395 crore price

(2) This was to be paid over 10 years (from 2008 to 2017)

(3) MCap (Feb ‘25) of CSK = ₹7,400 crore as per InCred Money unlisted shares feature

👌Works out to >> 20% XIRR*** — beats the Nifty hands down during this period (~13.5% CAGR | even after excluding the ‘08 - ‘09 drawdown)

💡Here’s how LIC got the CSK stake

(a) CSK was originally a division of India Cements

(b) In 2015, India Cements spun CSK out as a separate company

(c) As on 9th Oct ‘15, if you were an India Cements shareholder, you would have got 1:1 CSK shares for our India Cements shareholding

(d) LIC was an India Cements shareholder as on that date w/ ~5% ownership

(e) The shares were warehoused in an entity called India Cements Shareholder Trust

(f) Shares were distributed to India Cements shareholders in FY23

🧠The result?

LIC got a 4.9% stake in CSK.

Mr N. Srinivasan (India Cements promoter) is therefore now back to being a promoter of CSK — owns 28.14% of CSK.

And, it is this distribution by the Trust to shareholders in FY23 which kicked off a lot of unlisted market buying & selling of CSK shares. Hence, you will see shares of CSK available across different platforms including InCred Money.

✅The fun part? Because of platforms like InCred Money, although CSK is an ‘unlisted’ company - since it is a Public Ltd Co - you can find liquidity - therefore, this 20% XIRR is as good as realized 🙂

Read 6 tweets

Rahul Mathur

@Rahul_J_Mathur

Mar 6

I now have stupid % of cash net worth in Zomato & Swiggy (after the post correction buying) based on my Quick Commerce thesis.

The biggest discussion point with my grandfather* has been Blinkit v/s a global comp Instacart (US listed | $12.53bn MCap | IPO in Sept ‘23)

Zomato (Eternal) MCap is ~$24bn today — per Analysts, Blinkit is approx. 50% of that ($12bn MCap) i.e. like-for-like — Blinkit has the same MCap as Instacart… So, we tend spend time looking at Instacart’s public filings

Instacart generated ~$450M in profit for 2024 — just goes to show how powerful at an scale consumer commerce platform can be!!

Few notes below ⤵️

👍 of course, Instacart is NOT the same biz as Blinkit:

(1) US is different from India
(2) Instacart does store pick-ups v/s Blinkit’s dark store model
(3) Instacart focuses on ‘stock-up’ orders v/s QC in India is still ‘top up’ orders focused
(4) Instacart is grocery heavy (~85%) v/s QC in India is expanding categories beyond grocery

🤔But, what are Instacart’s metrics viz Blinkit?

Gross Order Value (GOV): $33.46bn v/s Blinkit’s annualized $3.5bn

Avg Order Value (AOV): $112 v/s Blinkit’s ₹707 (~$8)

Paid subscribers: 5.1M Instacart+ users ($99 p.a.) v/s 0 for Blinkit

No. of orders: 294M v/s Blinkit’s annualized 380M

Avg order frequency: 2-4 orders per month v/s Blinkit’s 5-10

Look @ difference in AOV & subscription income which drives Instacart profit.

🏦What is the goldmine in Instacart’s business? $958M of advertising income which is ~3% of GMV or 30% of total revenue from operations.

Btw, Indian QC cos like Blinkit & Zepto are way ahead of this (closer to 4% to 5% of GMV). Blinkit & Zepto are on track to do ₹1000 crore of ad income in FY24-25

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