For years, people in the industry have been curious about Hotstar’s premium subscriber base to no luck. Best estimates suggested it had about 1.5 million to 2 million subscribers. Executives at rival firms have expected that figure to be lower.
In fact, a months-long analysis conducted by one streaming firm in India concluded recently that there were 2 million paying subscribers for music and video services. So 8 million is a huge milestone.
Editor’s note:Our writer Rita’s journey from China to the US and back again was planned months before the coronavirus pandemic descended on the world. That descent ended up turning a simple trip home into a kind of epic journey. The changes in her location — which we reference, but do not dwell on, to help anchor the story — gave her a unique perspective on the changing landscape — and outlook — of the world as COVID-19 infections spread. We’re publishing a diary of that period here in part to relay some of that first-person perspective to you, our readers. It goes without saying, but the tech angles run throughout, as they are running throughout all of our lives right now (whether or not we “work” in tech). Apps connect us more than ever at a time when we can’t physically be together, and they are now a critical lever in getting things done. Governments scramble to use tech to track what’s happening — although surprisingly even what we think of as the most totalitarian efforts fall short in a crisis. And at the end of the day, the internet is where all our information is coming from. (IL)
Departing
On the night of March 13, before my flight from Philadelphia back to China, my Airbnb host stopped by my room to say goodbye. I was squeezing a stack of masks and a few bottles of hand sanitizer into my suitcase. They were the remaining stock of coronavirus protective items that I panic-bought in early February as soon as I landed in the U.S. As China’s production picked up speed, I gave away most of my supplies — which I had planned to bring back to my family in China — to friends and relatives in the U.S.
I had also asked my host, a slender, high-spirited botanist in her early fifties, whether she needed any supplies when I arrived at her house in early March. She gave a relaxed smile and said she wasn’t worried. There had barely been any cases in Philly, so there was no need. Plus, she had never worn a mask.
“People think you’re sick if you wear one,” she refused politely. “Why do people in Asia wear them?”
I explained that there’s a big debate on whether masks were necessary for the public. The consensus was that they were effective at preventing the transmission of COVID-19. Health officials in the West had for long recommended them only for patients or someone in contact with those who were sick, though the U.S. has recently moved to suggest mask-wearing for everyone in public.
In Asia, however, mask-wearing was a cultural norm even before the COVID-19 outbreak. Given the disease’s incubation period could be as long as 27 days, which meant many people could be unwitting carriers, wearing masks became an act of solidarity to protect others. Chinese cities had early on mandated mask-wearing in public. For me, they worked both as a placebo and a reminder not to touch my face.
Within a week’s time, the disease had advanced rapidly across the U.S., adding dozens of new cases in Philadelphia. All large events were suspended, and my host suffered from a handful of canceled stays.
I decided to ask her again whether she wanted any protective products. “Yes, that’d be great. I don’t have any sanitizers with me. No masks, either.” Her eyes lit up this time. “But how do you wear one?”
I handed her the items and realized that I was about to flee coronavirus for the second time. When I planned my visit to the U.S. a few months back, I had not the faintest idea it would spiral into two great escapes: first leaving China where the disease just began to spread, and later leaving the U.S. where a similar crisis was taking form.
Weeks 1-2: Fears in parallel worlds
I was getting restless when I left for the U.S. some 50 days ago. Objectively speaking, my chances of contracting COVID-19 were slim. I was previously in lightly-hit cities like Taipei (which was an early mover in putting effective control in place). And 99% of the passengers on my flight departing Hong Kong had masks on. But the sum of uncertain events triggered by the epidemic — from abrupt changes in border controls to canceled flights without notice — elevated my anxiety.
Things felt uncannily normal in Texas when I arrived. It was three weeks before the U.S. reported its first community transmission in late February. None of the screening I anticipated was present at immigration: no temperature checks or even questioning if I had been in Wuhan, the Chinese city where the first coronavirus case appeared. I felt relieved and immediately chucked the mask I had worn on the plane. “It’s safe here,” I thought to myself, seeking solace in the sight of the bare-faced crowd, even though I knew my decision was largely prompted by the prejudice against masks in this part of the world.
My relaxation was short-lived. In fact, I would live the next eight weeks swinging between reason and paranoia.
The relatives and friends with whom I had planned to stay could no longer host me. Their employers, both of Asian descent, had introduced a new 14-day self-quarantine rule on staff who came into contact with visitors from China even though Texas had no such regulation.
Cleaning supplies at a Costco in Plano, Texas, were out of stock in early March when the entire state had just one COVID-19 case. The area has a sizable Asian population. / Photo: TechCrunch
Technically, I could roam free, but fears amongst the local Chinese community were too visible. The digital tools that kept the diaspora emotionally close to home also distanced them from their physical reality abroad. Consuming a flood of fearmongering posts on WeChat, many Chinese expatriates began hoarding household products long before the U.S. saw an outbreak. Chinatowns became ghost towns. My mother was shocked to learn only Asians were wearing masks and messaged me daily saying I should wear one and avoid crowds.
I followed only the latter advice — avoiding crowds — and voluntarily opted for 14-day social distancing, not because I was scared of getting infected but because I was paranoid about passing it onto others asymptomatically. My compulsive information seeking in hopes of better understanding the epidemic only reinforced my angst. No silence I had dealt with felt as unbearable as the isolation amid the immense uncertainties that coronavirus brought to all of humanity.
Weeks 2-5: Coming to terms
When I finally allowed myself to resume socializing two weeks later, I would disclose to people that I had recently been in China out of courtesy. The reactions I received were a mixed bag.
Most of my American friends expressed sympathy for China’s situation and were pleased I was in a safer place. A local dentist refused to see me until 21 days later — then the longest time for a patient to display COVID-19 symptoms — because he lived with someone who was frail. Some Chinese friends living in the U.S. jokingly congratulated me on my escape from the plague, which wasn’t my intention but I admitted I was lucky. A fifty-something Chinese acquaintance avoided shaking my hand and gingerly asked how long I had been in the U.S.
I tried not to be bothered by people’s hint of mistrust. After all, their response was driven by the human instinct to survive. Trust had also eroded with the spread of the epidemic in China, where neighbors avoided conversations and a person’s sneeze in the elevator would make others cringe. Though understandable, these small shifts in behavior could take a toll on social interaction and people’s mental health in the long run.
By then, I knew I probably had a clean bill of health. It helped that Texas was run on wheels and I could easily practice social distancing walking on empty, tree-lined streets. As my mind restored to peace, and I moved to Philadelphia for the second part of my U.S. trip, I began to devour the expanding trove of Chinese-language writings on the disease; they were perhaps one silver lining behind the dark virus cloud.
Trapped indoors, Chinese people were forced to contemplate difficult questions — though sometimes leading to unintended consequences like a rise in divorce cases. The unusual level of civic engagement and discussion sparked by the crisis provided some consolation. Stories of ordinary people fighting illness were vividly told by institutional and citizen journalists. The death of whistleblower Li Wenliang set off an unprecedented amount of anger on the internet. Another enthralling moment came when internet users rushed to preserve a censored interview using coded text.
The unusual, collective outcry against Chinese authorities soon gave way to a fragmented digital world. As China’s heavy-handed lockdown began to bear meaningful results, online users rushed to trumpet the country’s contingency plan. Others submerged in the more mindless activities of mobile gaming and video streaming to pass time. Meanwhile, schools and businesses moved to resume digitally with IT support touted by private tech firms.
Food delivery staff of China’s Meituan worked through the COVID-19 crisis to sustain society’s lifeblood. / Photo: Meituan
The offline world in China was also inching back to normalcy. Physical shops were allowed to reopen and restrictions on movement were being eased nationwide. People increasingly ventured out of their homes, taking masks off to sneak sips of fresh air when guards were out of sight.
For others, the daily routine hadn’t changed much, though life had become more precarious. While it was easy for high-earning professionals to attend virtual meetings and celebrate the remote working boom, those working in services, manufacturing and logistics had not been able to stay home but worked round the clock to sustain society’s lifeblood. They were also unlikely to have paid leave and many lacked employer-provided health insurance. As it turned out, this is just one manifestation of disparity exposed by the health crisis.
Week 6: The price of seeking safety
I knew China was on the horizon as soon as I arrived at my flight’s departure gate. The crowd was uniformly wearing some kind of a face protector. I hadn’t put one on yet. I had been adjusted to a maskless environment for weeks by then and it didn’t seem necessary to wear one during the layover in Chicago, where I cautiously kept a distance from others. There were barely any masked travelers at the airport other than the passengers en route to Hong Kong and Mainland China.
I put on one nonetheless in the spirit of solidarity. But others’ ammunition of protective equipment immediately put me to shame. Many donned surgical gloves, some in lab goggles and even plastic rain ponchos, disinfecting any surface their bodies touched. Drinking water with my mask dangling off one ear now felt transgressive, not to mention I broke a taboo by having in-flight meals.
More than impressed by people’s precautions, I was intrigued by the discrepancy in their access to masks. Paying exorbitant prices could secure the robust but scant N95 respirators. Most had the less expensive surgical masks, but even those became hard to find without connections to a supplier. A few wore the dubious varieties like the sponge mask, the washable cartoon cloth mask (I wore a Hello Kitty one to my elementary school during the 2002 SARS epidemic) and even DIY ones like a fashionable shawl.
Flights also became a microcosm of the disparity in protection: first-class cabin passengers were seated at a supposedly safe distance from one another, while the elbow-to-elbow economy travelers fretted the risk of flying amid an outbreak would outweigh the benefit of returning to what they perceived as a safer country.
Even getting a seat on the plane was a privilege. While airlines were suffering overall due to travel bans, demand could surge temporarily around major policy shifts. Following the W.H.O’s declaration that COVID-19 was a global pandemic, schools around the world moved classes online and shut dorms, prompting international students to go home. Flight tickets skyrocketed. Those who wanted to go home but couldn’t afford the price were stranded.
Week 7: Battling uncertainties
Health checks at a border checkpoint in China to prevent COVID-19 being brought back to the country. / Photo: TechCrunch
While our plane was traveling across the globe, my home city of Shenzhen announced expanded compulsory quarantine for arrivals from four to eight countries — adding the U.S. to the list — in an effort to contain imported cases as the epicenter of COVID-19 shifted overseas.
At 8 PM, the Shenzhen customs checkpoint resembled a hospital waiting room with a barely moving queue a few hundred meters long. Screenings were underway to detect coronavirus cases. The updated policy had not been officially announced, and many travelers were still expecting their family on the other side of the border. Impatience and confusion filled a hall that was lit by nauseating fluorescent lights. Will everyone be tested for the virus at the border or later at a quarantine base? Will foreigners receive the test for free? Will people have to pay for the quarantine?
Even the immigration staffers had few details. China’s containment measures were in flux just like the spread of the virus. The flood of inbound returnees was quickly squeezing the country’s medical resources and filling budget hotels repurposed as quarantine facilities.
At 1 AM, I was finally called upon for a temperature check. I filled out a dozen forms asking similar questions about my travel history and health condition, each going to a different government agency. I wondered why, with China’s alleged technological prowess, this grunt work hadn’t been digitized or streamlined. Are resources for public monitoring going into other areas the government prioritizes?
I felt exhausted, but not more than the customs officer examining me, who had been toiling away for more than 12 hours. Despite having full-body protection, he was unaware his mask had slid beneath his nose.
“When do you get to go home?” I asked. “Who knows? There are so many of you coming back. China can’t afford another outbreak. We have no choice but to work,” he said nonchalantly.
Once my paperwork was sorted, I proceeded to cross the border. China immediately welcomed me with a text message, reminding me to register with the public security bureau as location data from my telecoms carrier showed I had recently been in “epidemic-stricken” America. The virus outbreak was giving Beijing more reason to monitor individuals. The question was why, given the government already commanded abundant citizen data, it seemed to have struggled in their early efforts to track people traveling from Wuhan.
As @thisboyuan reminds me, that the gov’t is scrambling to track people’s movement during the epidemic shows what Beijing has put in place for a national surveillance system still has considerable limitations
I was placed in a group of 20 travelers, most of whom were overseas Chinese students, to wait for the shuttle that would take us to the quarantine hotel. We bonded quickly by grumbling about the surreal eight-hour border crossing, but no one was actually angry. Instead, there was an outpouring of genuine gratitude for frontline health and immigration workers.
Famished, one of us volunteered to put everyone in a WeChat group so we could order food delivery together. The WeChat group, aptly named “3.14 Quarantine”, turned out to be useful for trading information and supporting each other through the erratic quarantine period. A street-sweeping truck was humming at a distance. The clock struck 4 AM as our bus pulled up in front of the hotel.
Travelers arrived at a hotel in Shenzhen that had been repurposed as a quarantine base. / Photo: TechCrunch
Week 8: Embracing chaos
Adjusting to the Chinese time zone became virtually impossible as my day confined to the hotel room was punctuated by a string of sporadic events: temperature checks, meal deliveries, nucleic acid tests, phone calls from various government agencies, and transfers to new quarantine locations. One night, we were given half an hour to pack up and got on a bus that took us to the edge of Shenzhen. There we underwent a virus-detecting test, only to be transported back eight hours later, at 3 a.m., to another hotel in the same area where we had previously stayed.
My quarantine peers were growing impatient with the unpredictable circumstances and began calling any relevant phone number they could find. As we shared in our WeChat group snippets of information we had collected from hotel staff, local officials, relatives and friends, something became clear: The quarantine system was the result of mass mobilization and complex coordination between public and private organizations, ranging from health workers and the Communist Party’s base-level administrative organ (called neighborhood committees) through to government-subsidized hotels and residential complexes.
When policymakers imposed frequent changes, the players implementing them on the ground often ended up scrambling, leading to miscommunication and such counterproductive measures as shuffling us around in crowded buses. They were briefed only on their part of the job rather than the entire process, which remained opaque, so getting close to policymaking power was critical. Calling a relative who worked in the disease control department was probably more useful than asking a hotel staffer. Personal ties seemed to matter even more in China when one sought control in times of uncertainty.
Some of us with insider information learned how to game the system. Before being dispatched to quarantine bases, we had to self-report our household address, for each district government was in charge of quarantining its own returning residents. The more deep-pocketed district normally provided higher-standard lodging and food, a piece of information precious to desperate individuals fighting for marginally better treatment.
I fall into the camp of people embracing chaos, as trying to stay informed and in control over continually updated guidance from above could quickly make me cross the line into anxiety.
There is already an abundance of self-care tips floating around, but having outrun the coronavirus twice, I could at least attest to their efficacy: Pare down your information sources to one or two trustworthy outlets; stay physically active; call people; keep a sense of humor; take deep breaths and perhaps spare some time for a mindfulness talk. It’s better to reserve grit for any long-term changes caused by COVID-19, which are looking increasingly likely.
On the afternoon of March 29, staff from my neighborhood committee came knocking on my door. Clad in blue hazmat suits, they gave me a final temperature check and granted me a piece of paper declaring my completion of the quarantine. I immediately put on a mask and went downstairs.
Things seemed intact at first glance, but a closer look revealed subtle but long-lasting changes since I had left two months prior.
Everyone was wearing a mask — even drivers alone in their cars. Premises had temperature checks and sanitizers at the entrances. Many small restaurants looked deserted; the ones back in business had more food deliverymen waiting about than people dining in. War-like propaganda posters dotted the street, reminding people that the battle against the plague wasn’t over. The world would never be quite the same.
These “paid subscriber” numbers include subscribers who are bringing in revenue for Disney but are not paying for the service themselves. (TechCrunch’s parent company Verizon is offering a year of free Disney+ to some customers.) It also includes 8 million subscribers in India, where Disney+ launched last week as part of Hotstar, a popular streaming service that Disney owns thanks to the acquisition of Fox.
The service has also been expanding internationally, launching in eight Western European counties — the U.K., Ireland, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Austria and Switzerland — in the past two weeks.
“We’re truly humbled that Disney+ is resonating with millions around the globe, and believe this bodes well for our continued expansion throughout Western Europe and into Japan and all of Latin America later this year,” said Kevin Mayer, the chairman of Disney’s direct-to-consumer and international business, in a statement.
In its latest earnings report, Netflix (which is far more global than Disney+ right now) said it has 167 million paid memberships worldwide.
The aerospace market is evolving quickly and merging with other segments of tech, making it an exciting space for both startups and investors — but the complications of the global pandemic are being felt by both.
Bessemer Venture Partners investor Tess Hatch has been helping guide companies in their portfolio through these strange times, and has been rolling with the punches herself.
Hatch recently spoke to us about the investment advice she’s been offering, which companies are being hit hardest and where opportunity still lies in the frontier tech world. (This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.)
Pandemic preparation
TechCrunch: To start off with, I’m interested in how the virus is affecting things in the investment world. Have you made any official accommodations, like a change of strategy, or putting off key investments, things like that?
Tess Hatch: Of course, we’re advising startups on things to do, like their employee safety, and implementing working from home, and tools and tips and tricks that can help that. Especially when it comes to hardware companies — it’s kind of hard to work from home when you’re manufacturing.
We’re advising them to really watch their burn, because their top line is not going to hit where they expected it to hit, like a double or triple revenue, it’ll maybe stay the same. If it increases even a little bit, they’re winning. We’re having these individual company-to-company conversations, just advising them on getting through, hopefully just these next couple of quarters, but it could be next year plus.
“We’re advising them to really watch their burn, because their top line is not going to hit where they expected it to. If it increases even a little bit, they’re winning.”
There is the question of deals that we were looking at, at prices when this wasn’t an issue. And we’re looking at those prices now being kind of out of market. But we’re still taking new pitch meetings, new deals, we’re still busy, just doing it in the comfort of our pajamas rather than at the office.
So would you say that it has affected the frequency or the cadence of your investments, on a larger scale?
There’s really been like three partnership meetings since craziness happened. And the number of deals that we’ve talked about in the presentations we’ve had, those have remained the same, but ask that question in three more weeks, and I’m sure it I’ll have a better answer.
One of the funny things we’re talking about is that investors, one of their favorite things is to be able to predict how the future, at least the next year or two, is going to go. But this is one of the greatest times of uncertainty we’ve all lived through. So how are you approaching that when there’s so much that’s uncertain, but there’s so much that you need to know in order to effectively manage your portfolio, give advice and make sound investments?
Right now, it is shaking everything that we’ve believed in so strongly. However, we still are looking out, let’s say two to five-plus years. The real question is if this is going to be, with quarantining and lowering the curve, a little bit more under control by let’s say the summertime, or if this is going to be more than a couple of quarters, say a couple of years.
“It is shaking everything that we’ve believed in so strongly. There are partners at the firm who have been here 20-plus years and this is new for them.”
So the only thing we really can do if we can’t look out that much further, we can advise our companies perhaps to raise a bit of extra capital now while the water is shut off, but there’s still a little bit trickling from the showerhead… To be able to last, hopefully, just a couple of quarters but perhaps even a couple of years. I have not seen anything like this in my small career, but there are partners at the firm who have been here 20-plus years and this is new for them as well. It’s like you said, the uncertainty of just not knowing how long or how drastically this is affecting everything.
None of us was totally won over, but Anthony and Jordan saw something to admire in Quibi’s ambition, and thought there was promise the initial lineup of shows — particularly the reality programs like “Chrissy’s Court” and “Punk’d,” which actually seem to benefit from the constraints of the short episode format.
There are some interesting scripted titles too, but even the shows we liked — particularly the Liam Hemsworth thriller “Most Dangerous Game” — felt like they’d better on a bigger screen, with a more traditional running time.
Darrell, meanwhile, enjoyed some of the content, but he was more convinced that the whole enterprise is a massive folly. In his view, the only way to make Quibi work is to take a looser approach to length and to bring the app to other devices.
You can listen to our review in the player below, subscribe using Apple Podcasts or find us in your podcast player of choice. If you like the show, please let us know by leaving a review on Apple. You can also send us feedback directly. (Or suggest shows and movies for us to review!)
And if you’d like to skip ahead, here’s how the episode breaks down:
0:00 Intro
0:27 “Star Trek: Picard” listener response
6:04 Quibi first impressions
The UK government, like a number of other countries around the world such as the US, has stepped up its pace in providing relief in the form of loans for businesses being impacted by the coronavirus health crisis and the related shutdown that we’ve seen across the economy and life as we knew it. But startups in the UK are increasingly getting worried that they are being left behind.
An open letter to the Chancellor published today and signed by the UK’s biggest “scale-ups” — later-stage, highly valued, but still venture-backed (and often loss-making) startups such as Deliveroo, Benevolent AI, Citymapper, Graphcore and Bulb — urged the UK government to make room to provide lending options to companies like theirs.
They are specifically calling for a special taskforce to be created to consider how to build lending schemes for companies like theirs, as well as to alter the rules on the three big schemes that have already been announced to accommodate them, and give them the same access as other businesses.
The letter, which we’re publishing in full below, is not the first cry for help. Earlier this week, another initiative called SOS (Save Our Startups), also published an open letter also asking for access to the same lending schemes that other businesses are getting. SOS includes dozens of smaller startups and a number of the VCs that back them.
The crux of the matter has been that startups backed with tens or hundreds of millions of dollars in funding from VCs to scale their growth have not been built or planned with profitability as a short-term or even medium-term goal. Many of them have so far eschewed public listings (and subsequent credit ratings, for starters) for longer in part because of the large amount of money available to them these days through the private markets — venture capital, family offices, private equity, and so on — to grow.
All of that is predicated, however, on the continued health of the wider economy and consumer demand that helped nurture their businesses in the first place. The current public health crisis has thrown that model into disarray, and has meant that the growth these companies had expected will simply not be coming in the form that they expected, if it comes at all. VCs might pick up some of the slack — the biggest of these are still raising, and have in their hands already, huge funds and will step up to support their most promising portfolio companies. But we don’t know how long the effects of the coronavirus will linger, and most likely these startups, like other businesses, will need more.
These include provisions around having established credit ratings for public companies (as in the case of the bigger loan schemes), or financing that is too small (as in the case of the smaller loan schemes), or the scaled-up companies have annual revenues that are too high (both the CBILS and CLBILS schemes have respective turnover thresholds of £45 million and £500 million).
In the meantime, the UK government has made small moves to encourage startups to continue building in a more focused way — for example, last week it announced £50 million in grants to businesses that are building better “resiliency” products to help companies better weather crises like this in the future. But for companies that regularly see revenues (and corresponding expenses and losses) in the tens and hundreds of millions, grants in the tens of thousands of dollars are like putting drops of water into the ocean.
But with startups accounting for some 30,000 businesses and some 300,000 workers in the UK, and significant sums towards the country’s GDP and operations, it seems like a big problem to ignore for too long.
[letter follows below]
Dear Chancellor,
We greatly appreciate the significant steps that you have taken to help British businesses through the COVID-19 crisis. But as founders and CEOs of leading UK companies we are concerned that unless urgent changes are made to the current schemes then the high-growth UK tech sector will be put at risk.
As innovative companies we build technology and systems that transform sectors. For customers, we drive costs down, standards up and for society we create whole new categories of products and services. We are vital to productivity, clean growth and UK exports.
But unfortunately, the COVID-19 lending schemes you have put in place benefit established firms and do not help companies of the future such as ours.
The businesses we run serve millions of customers across the UK, and overseas. We are stepping up to help the country at this difficult time by helping tens of thousands of small businesses to continue operating, helping vulnerable customers get essential services and using innovative technology to give the NHS better tools to tackle the pandemic.
The high-growth tech sector has introduced innovative new products that have improved the lives of millions of customers in the UK and many more around the world. We have created huge numbers of high skilled jobs and we export across the globe.
Our sector will be crucial to helping the UK economy bounce back quickly after the pandemic. The UK tech community is a world class engine for innovation and growth, however, it has not yet received Government support, unlike our competitors in France and Germany.
Our companies have all invested in technology and growth rather than short term profitability, which means that we are currently unable to access the schemes which have been designed with longer-established businesses in mind. The current schemes that you have put in place – the Covid Corporate Financing Facility (CCFF), the Coronavirus Large Business Interruption Loan Scheme (CLBILS) and the Coronavirus Business Interruption Loan Scheme (CBILS) – are not accessible to our businesses.
We are therefore writing to ask you to urgently set up a taskforce meeting of leading tech businesses to work with you and your officials to find a way for high-growth tech companies to be able to access the lending schemes you have already established or new schemes if necessary.
As you said in your Budget speech earlier this year, to help Britain’s businesses lead the next generation of high productivity industries, we need to invest in the technologies of the future. The high-growth tech sector has a vital role to play in the future success of the UK economy, and we urge you to work with us to ensure that it is helped through the crisis and that the UK is still the best place in the world to build a tech company.
All major indices rose Wednesday, led by the Dow Jones Industrial Average, which increased 3.44% to close above 23,000 for the first time since March 13.
Investors seemed heartened by comments made by National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Anthony Fauci, who said Wednesday that the U.S. death count from COVID-19 is lower than initially modeled thanks. He warned that the death count will continue to climb even as new cases slow.
The action Wednesday followed rallies earlier this week. Still, it should be noted that the Dow Jones Industrial Average still closed below yesterday’s high of 23,537.44, suggesting that this could be a bear market run.
Here’s the breakdown at closing:
Dow Jones rose 3.44%, or 779.71 points, to close at 23,433.57
S&P 500 increased 3.41%, or 90.57, to close at 2,749.98
NASDAQ popped 2.58%, or 203.64 points, to close at 8,090.90
Equities were also buoyed by oil prices and news that Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders, whose policies fueled concerns about higher taxes, was dropping out of the race.
The transportation saw a bump today. Uber rose 4.66% to close at $26.94. That’s still more than 34.7% below this year’s high of $41.27 reached in February. Meanwhile, Lyft also saw shares rise 7.78% to close at $29.64. Again, it’s the same story as Uber. Lyft’s share price is still off — about 45% — from the year-to-date highs.
Among today’s leaders were airlines, which have been one of the harder hit industries in this COVID-19 era. United led the pack with a 12.38% bump to close at $27.51, followed by American Airlines and Delta, which rose 109.% and 4.4% respectively. Tesla had a volatile day that ended nearly where it began, with a 0.62% increase to close at $548.84.
Automakers also saw shares rise. GM shares rose 8.59% to close at $23.13, while Ford increased 6.59% to $5.03 and Fiat Chrysler Automobiles closed up 3.15% to $7.86 a share.
NASA has chosen a new lunar surface delivery partner from its list of Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) vendors to actually transport stuff on its behalf – Mojave’s Masten Space Systems, which is being tapped by the agency to take eight payloads, including non science and tech instruments, to the Moon’s South Pole in 2022.
Masten is the fourth company awarded a lunar delivery contract under CLPS, after NASA announced that three other companies would be tasked with taking payloads back in May, 2019. Those included Astrobotic and Intuitive Machines, as well as Orbit Beyond. Orbit Beyond later dropped out of its contract, though Astrobotic and Intuitive Machines are still aiming to deliver their payloads using landers they’ve created sometime next year.
The new Masten contract, like the others in the CLOPS program, is part of NASA’s Artemis program, which seeks to return human tot he surface of the Moon, and set up permanent scientific exploration there, with the ultimate aim of using it as a stepping stone to taking humans to Mars and potentially beyond. NASA has focused on public-private partnerships like those formed through the CLPS program to assist it in making its Moon and Mars missions possible, and bringing commercial interests along for the ride.
Masten’s contract is a $75.9 million award, that specifies end-to-end delevirey of the payloads, as well as their integration with the company’s XL-1 lander. They’re also required to land on the Moon and operate for at least 12 days post-landing. The specific instruments that XL-1 will carry include tools for measuring and mapping the lunar surface temperature, as well as radiation, and the presence of hydrogen and other gases that could indicate the presence of water.
The XL-1 lander developed by Masten is an evolution of lander designs that took part in, and won the NASA Centennial Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander X-Prize Challenge in 2009. Masten has also developed and flown a number of vertical takeoff, vertical landing (VTVL) rockets on behalf of NASA, including the Xaero test vehicle.
Latin America’s leading legacy food delivery company iFood and Delivery Hero-owned Domicilios.com are merging in a bid to take on the food startup Rappi on its home turf.
The price of the transaction was undisclosed, but will result in iFood holding a 51% equity stake in the partnership, while Delivery Hero will hold the remaining 49%.
Domicilios, the Colombian online food ordering startup, raised $47.7 million before it exited to Berlin-headquartered Delivery Hero for an undisclosed price in 2014. And while iFood’s has operations in Colombia and Mexico in addition to Brazil, it hasn’t achieved the same kind of market penetration outside of its home country — where it serves +147,000 restaurants registered in over 1,000 cities.
iFood says the combined companies will have the largest geographic presence in Colombia with more than 12,000 restaurants in more than 30 cities across the country. With the merger, iFood inches closer to overtaking the top-spot in the Colombian market, behind the Bogota-based billion-dollar-valued hometown hero, Rappi.
Rappi has raised a total of $1.4B in funding over 8 rounds, including a $1 billion injection from SoftBank in 2019 that marked the largest single investment into a Latin American startup. Despite that capital, Rappi was hit with a wave of layoffs in January 2020, cutting 6% of staff amounting to roughly 300 employees.
We’re not certain whether the layoffs had any effect on the company’s valuation, which has been estimated at $3.5 billion.
Since its launch, Rappi has expanded its delivery portfolio to pharmaceuticals, banking services, and furniture in addition to groceries and restaurant delivery. Investors in the Latin American market speculate that Rappi is burning money as it battles UberEats and Didi (also both heavily backed by SoftBank)
iFood hopes the acquisition will boost business growth for restaurant and delivery partners in the region, while generating more competitive delivery products and services for Colombians.
iFood prides itself on business intelligence and management solutions, and is backed by Movile Group and Just Eat, a leading global hybrid marketplace for online food delivery.
The coronavirus pandemic is expected to hit Brazilian retailers and restaurants hard, as zero-tech restaurants are forced to enable digital delivery to stay in business. In response, iFood announced a $9.8 million fund to help sustain restaurants within its network.
Startups big and small, across all industries, are affected by the novel coronavirus pandemic. From Etsy to MongoDB, from Twilio to Foursquare, these companies are looking for ways to capitalize and ultimately thrive in what has become a survivalist landscape.
These companies also happen to be portfolio companies of one, Albert Wenger .
We’re excited to have Union Square Ventures’ Managing Director Albert Wenger join us for a live discussion on the impacts of COVID-19 on the firm, the advice he’s offering to his portfolio companies, and adaptation strategies for the broader startup ecosystem.
Wenger has been vocal about how startups should approach PPP loans, and has an interesting perspective on this week’s news of Foursquare merging with Factual. We’re amped to hear more from him on both topics and plenty more.
Before he began his investment career, Wenger was an entrepreneur himself, cofounding five (FIVE!) companies, including a management consulting firm, a hosted data analytics company, a technology subsidiary for Telebanc, and DailyLit (a service for reading books by email or RSS). Wenger also served as President of Del.icio.us prior to and through its sale to Yahoo.
We have a handful of questions we’d like to ask, but Wenger has graciously offered to answer questions from the audience, as well. So come prepared!
The chat will begin tomorrow (Thursday, April 9) at 12pm EDT/9am PDT and go for about an hour.
