Hey hey, Flux fam!

Here's everything you need to know today - in under 3 minutes.

Today's big stories

🥳 Airtasker bounces back from COVID lows

💰 Google invests US$1 billion into an Indian telecom

🔻Robinhood shares tank on shocker earnings forecast

Oh and get this...

Rafael Nadal has won the Australian Open...but that ain't the only thing he's cheering about. Nadal took home a huge $2.875 million for his win - a 4.55% increase on the prize money last year.

Airtasker gives Nadal a run for his money with an insane COVID comeback

Background: Airtasker is an Aussie company that launched back in 2012. The company helps people get odd jobs done (like bathing your pet parrot) and it has around 2 million users.

What happened: Airtasker struggled during COVID lockdowns in 2021. Restrictions stopped handy people from being able to fulfil handy tasks, and as a result, the company's gross marketplace volume took a $12 million hit.

What else: Now, things have bounced back quicker than Nadal in the Aus Open finals. The company's reported gross marketplace volume increased to $48.6 million - a 40% increase quarter-on-quarter!

So what's the key learning?

💡Gross marketplace volume (or gross merchandise volume in a marketplace) is the total value of merchandise sold over a given period of time.

💡In Airtasker's case, it would be the total amount of revenue generated on the platform from tasks, as opposed to just the company's overall revenue.

💡GMV is often used to determine how healthy a marketplace business is, because it can help provide insight into a company's performance, even if they aren't producing any goods themselves.

Google sinks US$1 billion into Indian telecom and says, 'let there be cheap smartphones'

Background: In 2020, Google announced it would be creating a US$10 billion Google Indian Digitisation Fund.

What happened: Now, it looks like Google is putting its money where its big, algorithmic mouth is. The company is investing US$700 million in an Indian telecom called Bharti Airtel - the country's second-largest telco.

What else: The two companies are hoping to work together to bring down the cost of smartphones in India. And it ain't Google's first rodeo - back in 2020, the company invested US$4.5 billion into Jio Platforms, Airtel's rival.

So what's the key learning?

💡With a population of nearly 1.4 billion, big tech companies are betting that India will be the next big market.

💡Since the start of 2020, US tech companies (like Amazon, Facebook and the G-Unit) have invested around US$17 billion into the country...because they can't get their hands on the world's other big kahuna: China. Ya know, the Great Firewall...

💡India has around 750 million internet users...with hundreds of millions more yet to come online for the very first time. So, watch this space.

Robinhood tanks after a shocker earnings forecast and what goes up must come down, I guess

Background: Robinhood is the US trading platform of the US people. Their ethos is that investing should be for everyone. It raised nearly US$2 billion to be valued at a massive US$32 billion.

What happened: Since then, it's been a bit of a downhill ride. Monthly active users on Robinhood dropped by 2 million since the previous quarter.

What else: On top of that, Robinhood reported a net loss of US$423 million and YUP you guessed it...shares tanked around 14% on the news. Shares in the company are now down around 77% from their all-time-high in August last year.

So what's the key learning?

💡If businesses want their customers or app users to stick around long-term, they need to create a product that's designed to be long-term.

💡For a long time, Robinhood attracted app users that were short-term investors...ya know, the 'pump and dump' kind. But with its active users declining, Robinhood knows it needs to change its tactic.

💡Now, the company is building a product suite that's intended to support long-term investing. That's things like retirement accounts, deposit and withdrawal accounts and instant debit cards. Fingers cross for the R-train this works.