Weekly News Wrap: Indian jewelers shut stores on key holiday; Meituan shares slump over controversial post

And Chinese grocery app Dingdong Maicai raises $330m in D plus funding round.

From Bloomberg:

For a second year in a row, most jewelers in India have shuttered their stores on a day considered one of the most auspicious to buy gold as the country grapples with the world’s worst health crisis.

Purchases of valuables including bullion on Akshaya Tritiya, which falls on 14 May for 2021, are considered to bring luck and prosperity by the nation’s majority Hindu population. That tradition has been tested since last year as buyers now have to rely on either online purchases or forgo it entirely due to restrictions on stepping out and conducting business activity as coronavirus infections and deaths surge in India.

India has reported more than 300,000 daily infections for more than 20 consecutive days and one research model is predicting deaths could almost quadruple to more than a million by the end of July.

“The second wave is much more severe than last year and the mood is also very somber with almost every family touched by the virus,” said Ashish Pethe, chairman of the All India Gem and Jewellery Domestic Council. 

Read more here.

From Reuters:

Shares of Chinese food delivery giant Meituan slumped further on 11 May in a sell-off precipated by the social media posting by its chairman of an ancient poem that was perceived by some as criticising the government and President Xi Jinping.

The company, which recently raised $10b, has lost $30b in market value over two days amidst a broader drop in Chinese tech shares as investors remain jittery over a regulatory clampdown that last month ensnared Meituan.

The poem, posted on 6 May by Chairman and CEO Wang Xing on a small social media site that he founded, criticises the emperor of the Qin dynasty, who burnt books to suppress intellectual dissidents, only for it to be overthrown by illiterates. The original posting has been removed.

Whilst many on Chinese social media interpreted the posting as an allusion to the anti-monopoly campaign backed by Xi, Wang said he was referring to business rivals, saying that "the most dangerous opponents are often unexpected ones".

Read more here.

From Reuters:

Chinese grocery app Dingdong Maicai has raised $330m, advisor Cygnus Equity said, amidst a surge of fundraising in the sector. The so-called D-plus round of fundraising led by the SoftBank Vision Fund followed the vegetable e-commerce platform's $700m D round completed last month, bringing its total recent fundraising to over $1b.

Online delivery platforms in China have been raising funds to compete in a crowded sector that got a boost from pandemic-induced demand for home shopping, with food delivery giant Meituan recently raising $10b.

Fresh produce is an especially hot sector, with giants Alibaba Group and Pinduoduo stepping up their offerings, attracted by the huge market and high-frequency consumption. Cygnus was Dingdong Maicai's advisor in both rounds.

Read more here.