Unusual Acquisitions, and Sachin's acting| #102
Announcing a K-Pop Quiz ➡️
“Look, bro, you mean to tell me that Elon Musk not a alien? C'mon, brah, he's trying to get people to go on Mars.”
Memphis rapper NLE Choppa believes that Elon Musk is an alien for his obsession to re-engineer things such as electric cars and space travel. We may not agree with the alien bit, but he did make news this week with his acquisition (yet to completely go through) of everyone’s favourite place on the internet - Twitter. And many are wondering why a man who owns a boring company, a car company, a space travel company, now wants to own a social media company.
This week’s newsletter is dedicated to unusual acquisitions.
Things we learnt this week 🤓
Energizer is famous for its batteries and its bunny. But mostly batteries. But for some reason they paid close to 2 billion dollars for Playtex - a global leader in undergarments, baby products, gloves, feminine products, and sunscreen business. Wonder what the synergies are here. Eventually in 2015, Energizer spun off Playtex into a separate business. Maybe Energizer did need the extra support that Playtex offered.
Skype was first released in 2003 and had nearly 20 year head-start for the apocalyptic scenario of everybody needing to fatigue in front of a computer screen. But they have largely been forgotten and it may have to do with its constant change of ownership. In 2005, eBay decided to buy skype for over 2.5 Billion dollars - something synergy something - people can use skype for bidding on ebay. Things didn’t work out and eventually Skype was taken over by Microsoft in 2011. Skype should have ZOOMed ahead with many TEAMS trying to MEET online. But today they are an EX on the WEB.
Before Facebook, there was MySpace. At its peak, it had over 115 million users. Rupert Murdoch of the News Corp and Fox news fame, decided to buy it for over $580M. Instead of facing the competition from Facebook, Murdoch decided to make MySpace more of an entertainment and news portal leading to disastrous results. In the end, Facebook allowed users access to its API, enabling creation of apps whereas MySpace was a shut shop. In the end, it was sold off for $35M a whooping 94% loss. Murdoch was saying No Space to MySpace.
From IWTK, with love 💌
It was Sachin Tendulkar’s 49th birthday recently. Did you know Tendulkar acted in a bollywood film way before he became ‘The Sachin Tendulkar’?
He could have been Einstein cheta. The little known story of the invitation Albert Einstein received to become the vice chancellor of the University of Kerala.
Quiz Alert 🔎
From Boy in Luv to Butter, How you Like that to Ddu- Du Ddu - Du and Thunderous to Christmas Evel, the Hallyu wave has taken over the entire globe. Join us on the 14th of May from 4-5 pm on a zoom call to participate in a kpop quiz.
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❤️ IWTK