Jack Ma starts a food business

🚨 Where Jack’s been - Jack Ma has been laying low after his comments on China’s government, disappearing from the public eye for almost 2 years.

🥕 New food project - Recently, it appears Jack Ma incorporated a small food company called "Hangzhou Ma’s Kitchen Food," at the same place where Alibaba is located and where Ma grew up. It has a starting capital of 10 million yuan or $1.4 million.

❓️ What they do - Hangzhou Ma’s Kitchen Food sells pre packaged food, processes and agricultural produce. There’s a big market for it according to CNN:

• Demand for ready made meals has grown 28% ($71.1B) and pre packaged foods tripled ($1.5B to $4B)

• This is driven by pandemic habits, inflation and quickness to prepare

Flipkart’s Web3 loyalty program will be powered by Polygon CDK

💎 Flipkart, Polygon CDK and Hang - Flipkart, one of India’s biggest ecommerce companies has found someone to power its Web3 loyalty program. Polygon CDK and Hang will help build an Ethereum-based zero knowledge layer-2 network for:

• Streamlined services (onboarding, a dedicated blockspace, low transaction fees)

• More scalability in the future

🎁 Web3 for loyalty - Flipkart’s Web3 program, known as FireDrops, have attracted 3.3 million wallets. Its meant to improve user engagement through rewards and gamification. FireDrops will have quests and games related to brands where rewards can be membership passes and lifetime discounts.

Grab Philippines might have longer bookings this Christmas

🛑 Corruption Scandal - The Land Transportation Franchising and Regulatory Board’s (LTFRB) has an ongoing corruption scandal that has given Grab problems in getting drivers. The LTFRB is being accused of supervising a bribery scheme within the group, although these claims were later withdrawn.

🚗 Slowing for Christmas - According to Grace Vera-Cruz, Grab Country Head, Grab couldn’t secure regulatory approval for 10,000 to 20,000 more drivers for its holiday fleet. GrabCar booking spikes up 45% roughly during the 2nd week of December. Even if Grab were to get the grant, there would be too little time to survey and onboard new drivers.