Daily Crunch: In Its Second Downgrade In 4 Months, Invesco Cuts Swiggy’s Valuation To $5.5B

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Hello, and welcome to a new week. Haha He’s free today, so it’s just you and me going through the biggest stories of the day. Let’s hit it! — christina

TechCrunch Top 3

• Price reduction in aisle five: Invesco cuts the valuation of Indian food delivery giant Swiggy to $5.5bn. In October, the valuation dropped to $8 billion. manish writes: “Recent Valuation Downgrades Bring New Perspective to the Effects of Deteriorating Global Market Conditions on Indian Startups”; where funding was low, valuations were not following.
• bet paid: Qualcomm acquires Autotalks, reportedly for $350 million to $400 million, to power Snapdragon’s automotive safety technology. ingrid writes that this agreement was not a huge surprise, noting: “In the world of advanced automotive technology, safety has become one of the most important issues, but also one of the most lucrative opportunities, in building autonomous vehicles and driver assisted systems”.
• Don’t blink or you’ll miss it: ingrid he also wrote about Go1, which has acquired Blinkist, a speed reading app, with plans to expand enterprise learning.

Startups and VCs

When my husband and I bought our first home, we couldn’t wait to see the builders get started and build it. Months later, we were still waiting on what the builder said was a municipal holdup, meaning permits weren’t being issued fast enough. After reporting on PermitFlow’s new $5.5 million roundI now know why this is a problem.

Meanwhile, natasha m. spoke with Navin Chaddha of Mayfield about the The VC firm’s new $955 million fund, writing that now that the company is bigger and busier, “the capital will be used to accelerate the investment cadence of the company in a more realistic market. Chaddha also admits that Mayfield has missed out on a lot of opportunities due to high valuations, but that he’s okay with that.”

Now here are four more for you:

NFX’s James Currier: Where the unicorn ideas come from and why the founders “have to keep spinning”

Are you a seed-stage founder building a unicorn?

NFX founding partner James Currier would like to save you some time: startups that grow into multi-billion dollar companies have three basic forms of defense:

• Network Effects: Your product becomes more valuable as more people use it.
• Onboarding: Integrate your services so deeply that customers “can’t boot” them.
• Data Loops: Collect, process, and act on data in real time.

“Really, it’s just big business that changes the world and has a big impact that could be worth a billion dollars or more,” he said on TechCrunch Early Stage last month.

Three more from the TC+ team:

TechCrunch+ is our membership program that helps start-up founders and teams get ahead of the rest. You can sign up here. Use code “DC” to get 15% off an annual subscription!

big tech inc

Hey Twitter users, your follower count is about to drop, according to Elon Musk. Sarah reports that Twitter will delete old accounts who hasn’t tweeted in a long time. The good news is that you may be able to get a better username, depending on which account it is. Happy hunting! Also in bird news, Ivan writes that the social media giant is discussing a cheaper organizational verification plan.

We loved it ConnyThis weekend’s story about a New York Times reporter’s close encounters with Elizabeth Holmes, who, left to her own devicesapparently he can still absorb people.

And here are four more for you:

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