One important thing: It seems like PhonePe is on track with its India IPO plans. 

• The Walmart-owned payments and financial services leader has moved its businesses and subsidiaries from Singapore to India. 

This move was on the cards for a while. PhonePe co-founder and CEO Sameer Nigam told us in June that the company plans to list in India once its core businesses turn profitable, a feat it hopes to achieve by 2023.

In today's newsletter:

• PayU's $4.7B BillDesk acquisition is off
• The prolonged funding winter
• Layoffs at WazirX

We also have two pieces of news about Kim Kardashian, one good and one bad. Which one do you want to hear first? (Scroll down for more deets!)

Over a year after PayU India’s parent Prosus announced the acquisition of payment gateway BillDesk for $4.7 billion, the deal is now off the table.

The news is surprising given that the deal was approved by the Competition Commission of India (CCI) less than a month ago!

Earlier today, Netherlands-headquartered Prosus said in a stock exchange filing:

"...certain conditions precedent were not fulfilled by the 30 September 2022 long stop date, and the agreement has terminated automatically in accordance with its terms and, accordingly, the proposed transaction will not be implemented."

The company did not elaborate on the conditions that were not met.

The deal's termination after a year makes it difficult for BillDesk to provide an exit for its investors, while slowing PayU's growth plans in the Indian payments space.

BillDesk co-founder MN Srinivasu told us in an interview after the acquisition was announced in August 2021 that the company was working on an Initial Public Offering (IPO) to provide an exit to its investors, which included Visa, General Atlantic, and Temasek Holdings, when Prosus approached them for a buyout.

"..it (the deal) provides us the necessary backing and impetus to grow. It also allows the right exit for shareholders who have been there for long," he had said.

BillDesk will now have to go back to the drawing board for its plans to give its investors an exit.

According to industry estimates, BillDesk enjoys a 25-30 percent market share in the online payment aggregator space, followed by Razorpay at 15-20 percent. PayU is the third largest player with a share of 10-15 percent.

The acquisition would have given PayU the necessary boost to become the dominant player in the space.

The first nine months of 2022 have been painful for Indian startups as funding to the world’s third-largest startup ecosystem has dried up amid uncertain macroeconomic conditions.

Because of rising inflation and shrinking liquidity, private equity and venture capital firms have slowed their investment. This comes after startups had a banner year in 2021, raising nearly $65 billion in equity funding.

• PE/VC firms have invested $36 billion in 1,016 deals in the first nine months of 2022, down from $45.4 billion in 949 deals in the same period of 2021, data by Venture Intelligence showed
  
  
• In the first nine months of 2022, investors have made early-stage deals worth $2.3 billion versus $2.5 billion in the whole of 2021 and growth-stage deals worth $672 million versus $856 million
  
  
• On the other hand, late-stage deals have almost halved to $10.8 billion in the first nine months of 2022 from $20.6 billion in the whole of 2021
  
  
• With 68 deals so far in 2022, Sequoia Capital has maintained its position as the leading investor in India.

Go deeper

We reported last week that investors expect Indian startups to stare at a funding winter of 12-18 months.

The data and investors' outlook point to more pain for the world's third-largest startup ecosystem, as Indian startups are already showing signs of stress due to a lack of funding.

So far in 2022, startups have laid off over 13,000 employees and closed down certain non-core verticals to conserve cash.

At least two well-funded companies--ShopX and Lido Learning--have filed for bankruptcy, while many are staring at down rounds.

WazirX, a cryptocurrency exchange, laid off 40% of its employees last week to weather the crypto winter. The exchange laid off members from its policy, communications and marketing team, as per sources.

This comes around a week after the ED had unfrozen its bank accounts, allowing the platform to resume banking operations after almost a month.

The exchange has been in the news for a while now.

• WazirX, which has been subject to an ED probe for more than a year, was also disowned by Binance hours after the enforcement agency froze its accounts.
  
  
• Nischal Shetty and Siddharth Menon, the co-founders, became engrossed with their new initiatives (Shardeum and Tegro respectively).

The exchange has also seen a slew of exits from its mid and senior-level positions in recent months.

• The founder of Celsius Network, Alex Mashinsky, withdrew $10 million from the cryptocurrency lender just weeks before the firm frozen user accounts as it headed toward bankruptcy, the Financial Times reported.
  
  
• NFT sales totalled $3.4 billion in the third quarter of 2022, down from $8.4 billion the previous quarter and $12.5 billion at the market's peak in the first quarter of the year, according to blockchain tracker DappRadar.

Celebrities who have been pumping new crypto tokens over the past year must be worried.

Kim Kardashian has agreed to pay $1.26 million in penalties to settle charges that she endorsed a cryptocurrency without disclosing that she had been paid for the promotion.

“This case is a reminder that, when celebrities / influencers endorse investment opportunities, including crypto asset securities, it doesn’t mean those investment products are right for all investors,” said SEC Chairman Gary Gensler.

Meanwhile, in some good news for Kim K’s fans, audio streaming platform Spotify has dropped the first two episodes of her first exclusive podcast series focused on criminal-justice reform called Kim Kardashian’s The System: The Case of Kevin Keith, with new episodes releasing every Monday (Talk about timing!)