#2 Ola 🚀
Unicorn boom, LG shutters smartphones, Norway goes electric
Ola and welcome back to another edition of Business News for Kids (BNFK for short; genius isn’t it?). It’s been a hectic week for fund houses, creating way more Unicorns than we can handle.
Wait, what’s a Unicorn?! No, not that mythical creature. Checkout the “Wait, what” section 🙂
About BNFK
Knowledge is at the heart of Being. To be more, you must know more.
With this weekly we distill the latest, most interesting, Business News 📰 .. to an emoji filled Newsletter for Kids. A dad 👽 & son 👾 experiment, delivered every Sunday.
Catch our previous editions here > Edition #0 , Edition #1
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Busy business this week 💼
The Korean electronics giant LG, maker of TV's, Air Conditioners and more, are shutting down their smartphone business 😔. They decided to do this because they want to focus on growth areas like electric cars and robotics 🤖.
Norway reached a new Electric 🚃 milestone. In march, 84.9% of the cars sold in Norway were environment friendly (or friendlier) 🎉 . These included 56.3% of battery electric vehicles and 28.6% plugin hybrids. Teslas Model 3's and Audi E-Tron's made up over 50% of battery electric vehicles sold.
Amazon has quietly built up its Advertising revenue to $15 billion in 2020, up 50%+ from 2019, and now accounts for 10% of ALL US digital advertising 😇. Did you know when you buy from Amazon, its not always Amazon that sells these products to you? These products are many times sold by other Sellers and Brands. These sellers & brands list their products for sale, and then advertise them to users that come to Amazon; and thats how Amazon makes money from Advertising. 😎
And of course.. Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, remains the world’s richest person for the 4th time in a row, as per the just released Forbes Billionaire List; He is worth a cool $177 billion 🤑
India added 7+ new Unicorns in the first 7 days of the new financial year 🤯 with some already Unicorns raising big money funding. Meesho a social commerce company raised $300 million, investment platform Groww raised $83 million, Swiggy a food delivery company raised $800 million, while Byju’s an edtech company is planning a $700 million funding and just bought physical education company Aakash for $1 billion 🚀 Discuss all about funding and raising with Dad or a big person at home.
Wait, what is..
Unicorn: Other than the mythical creature many of us love 🦄, the term Unicorn is used for a Startup that is worth $1 Billion. How do you decide the worth or value or “valuation” of a startup? Ask Mom or a big person at home.
Digital Advertising: When you visit a website or use a mobile app, you might have noticed those banner ads or video ads. This form of advertising where brands, apps and companies advertise to users via website and apps, is called Digital Advertising. Its a $300 billion industry. 📈
AdTech: Advertising Technology, or AdTech in short, refers to technologies that help deliver digital ads to consumers like you and me when we browse websites or mobile apps.
EdTech 😅: AdTech, EdTech, Don’t-Get-Confused-Tech. Like Ad Tech refers to Advertising Technology, EdTech refers to.. wait for it.. Education Technology! 😂 Any company that is building software or online courses for education are classified as Edtech.
Financial Year: A Financial year or a Fiscal year is a year through which companies count how much money they make, their profits/losses etc. The year is different to a normal calendar year and starts in some countries from 1st April or 5th April.
Quarter (or Q1, Q2, Q3, Q4): A ‘quarter’ like every other quarter is 1/4th of a Financial Year. Businesses report their performance by each Quarter of the year, divided into a set of 3 months. For e.g. January, February, March is usually Q1 in the US, but Q4 in India 🥴 [check Stocks, Stonks👇 where you’ll find reference of Q1]
Listing, Listed 💹 : Most companies begin life as a Private company. This simply means the Shares of the company are not bought and sold freely. When a company says they are going ‘public’ or that they are ‘listing’, this means that they are now making available their shares to be bought and sold by anyone in the public.
Funding, Raising 📈: A startup ‘takes’ money from investors over a period of time, at different stages of its life. Each time they take this money, its referred to as Funding round; or you can say they Raised the money. Remember reading about Series B from the last Edition?
Woah business 😱
Title change.. this week the news is more Woah than Weird 🤷
Movies are back in theatres! Godzilla 🦖 vs. Kong 🦍 debuted with a $50 million opening. We can’t wait to watch it.
Its not just Unicorn week for India, but looks like it could be Unicorn year 💹 too, 10 startups have entered the club in just the first 3 months of 2021!
Inspiring business people to know 🙏
This week’s inspiring business person is.. Jeffery Preston Bezos
Jeff Bezos, founded Amazon in 1994 as an online bookstore; and today we know it as the biggest online store for pretty much everything, or atleast 10 million+ things 🙀. While he is the richest person in the world, thats not what makes him special. That he created such a company does. He has also founded Space Technology company Blue Origin that aims to make reusable rocket parts to make space flight more affordable. Read more about him here.
Stocks, stonks and.. ⚡️
Coinbase, one of the worlds largest crypto currency exchanges, will list on the Nasdaq next week. It also released its Q1 2021 revenue figures of $1.8 billion, thats more than ALL of their revenues made in one year i.e. 2020.
Image source: news.bitcoin.com
Per unconfirmed reports, Indian adtech Unicorn (yes another one), InMobi, is aiming for a $15 billion listing on the Nasdaq.
Mental models.. whaaaat! 🤯
My dad insisted we put this section in here, even though I protested saying its going to be a while before kids need to apply mental models. Mental models are nothing but ways of thinking, you can use as a framework to take decisions or solve problems. Who knows, they might just be useful!
Occam's Razor or Principle of Parsimony 🤯 🤯 - A system of thinking proposed by English philosopher William of Ockhem sometime in the period circa 1310-1347 AD that "when presented with competing explanations about the same prediction (event or occurrence), one should select the solution with the fewest assumptions". The use of the word 'razor' is to highlight how one should look to 'cut out' complexity in favour of otherwise simple explanations. The word 'parsimony' means extreme unwillingness to use resources; also a reference to 'cut out'.
What's the key take away > Don't overthink things, 😎 sometimes "the simplest explanation is usually the right one".Tech, products, toys ++ 🤖
Ever seen a car that walks? Hyundai’s walking car called TIGER aka Transforming Intelligent Ground Excursion Robot, has been released with tyres that rise to act like legs, allowing it to navigate tough terrains. Watch the video for more. Image source: PopSci
Good things come to boys and girls that read till then end.. click here for a fun game - 🚢 Steer the Ship made by CNN; its a great tribute to the Ship stuck in the Suez and also to understand how difficult it must have been for the crew. In case you’ve been living under a rock, here’s what inspired this game. Tell us your scores in the comments ⛵️
Pro Tip: The magic of learning is in curiosity. Don’t shy away from clicking those hyperlinked texts to read and learn more. We mostly hyperlink to text we have read ourselves to make sure it is safe, but please be aware that comments and ads shown on these pages are beyond our control. We recommend using a kids friendly browser to view the links.
Disclaimers: Please preview, review, and make sure to pass on only that content which you feel is appropriate for your kids. Stocks or cryptocurrencies covered are in no way a recommendation and shared only for news / information purposes. We have near zero expertise on investing, and it’s always good to know that Cryptocurrencies are a highly risky, and even illegal, investment in many markets :)
Thank you so much for reading - Arv 👾 & Dad 👽 - Pls hit share to make someone’s day.