Read this Tuesday’s edition of the FolhaMercado newsletter (30) – 05/30/2023 – Market

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Government bans flexible Hurb packages

The Ministry of Justice ordered Hurb (formerly Hotel Urbano) to suspend the sale of flexible packages. The prohibition does not have a specific period, and the company can still negotiate packages with a defined date.

Understand: the flexible model is seen as the Hurb’s main differential.

• The company issues super promotional offers that do not work with exact dates, but periods in which the trip can be made.
• After the purchase, it checks flights and daily rates and sends the available options within a period of up to 45 days before the first date.

This modality was the one that brought together the biggest complaints from customers against the company, with complaints that it did not honor with tickets and accommodation of previously purchased packages.

The Hurb stated that he was not notified of the suspension and that, for legal reasons, he will not comment on the process. He said he was still available to the authorities to provide clarification.

Did not work: the ban comes after the company presented to Senacon (National Consumer Secretariat) last week its restructuring plan for travel packages that have not yet been fulfilled by the platform.

• The plan did not please the government because “it did not bring enough and consistent information”, said the national consumer secretary, Wadih Damous.

At the time, the company reaffirmed that customers who purchased the packages will travel and that more than 87% of queries in its communication channels were resolved, as well as complaints in Reclame Aqui.

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Investment decreases and goes to minors

Cash on hand, but with a back foot when it comes to investing. This has been the keynote of the VC (venture capital) market in Brazil and in other parts of the world since mid-2022.

It was at this time that the first signs of rising interest rates in the US began to appear, reducing the abundant liquidity in the markets and reducing investor appetite for riskier investments.

This waysmaller rounds and startups in early stages once again dominated funding, resuming the local market trend before the consecutive investment records in 2020 and 2021.

In numbers: a survey by the KPMG consultancy shows that VCs invested US$ 164 million (R$ 819.7 million) in Brazilian startups in the first quarter of 2023 – the lowest amount since the beginning of 2019.

• 6 out of 10 rounds made in the period were in early investment stages (angel, pre-seed and seed).

Which explains: in addition to the global factor of lower liquidity in the markets, the domestic scenario of investment in startups has its particularities:

• Helicopter money: it is a well-known movement in the market in which the gringo investor pours money when conditions are favorable, but leaves the market as soon as the scenario is reversed.
• Minor contributions: before the boom generated by the pandemic, the Brazilian market already had a focus on initial rounds, which move less money.

Yes but… Even though we are experiencing a downturn in relation to the pandemic’s excess liquidity, the startup investment market is still showing evolution compared to 2019, the last year before the health crisis.

The vision –supported by the numbers– is defended by local managers and gringos who work in the country. They claim to see a more “mature” sector around here, with entrepreneurs better adapted to facing adversity and dialoguing with investors.

– Do you have a question about entrepreneurship? Send to [email protected], the Sheet will select a few for experts to answer.

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‘Sweetheart’ of the market, Nvidia shows news

After Nvidia attracted the attention of the market with the projection of record revenue in the wave of AI (artificial intelligence), the American chip giant announced this Monday a package of news aimed at the technology of the moment.

Understand: last Thursday, when the company released its January-March balance sheet, it also forecast sales of $11 billion for the current quarter, thanks to demand for AI.

• The anticipation sent its shares soaring 25% the next day. In the year, the shares jump 160%, which puts the company on the verge of US$ 1 trillion in market value.
• Nvidia’s relationship with AI is that it also produces the GPUs (Graphics Processing Units) that are used to train language models for generative AI such as ChatGPT.

The news package:

↳ AI supercomputer: the DGX GH200 has 256 superchips equipped with the H100 graphics processing unit and reaches the mark of an exaflop (one billion operations per second), the same processing power as a human brain.

↳ Nvidia Avatar Cloud Engine (ACE) for Games: will assist developers and studios in creating characters for video games, with appearance, animation and voice.

↳ Metaverse: users will be able to develop programs in the Nvidia Omniverse (the company’s mixed reality space for the corporate environment) without using code, only with commands in virtual language.

Two days before the announcements, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang spoke to graduates at the National Taiwan University and said that anyone who doesn’t embrace the technology will be left behind.

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‘Paris agreement on plastic’

Delegates from around 175 countries are meeting this week at UNESCO headquarters in Paris to negotiate a multilateral agreement on reducing plastic waste in the world.

Understand: plastic has long been considered a villain for the environment, but the idea now is to sign a pact between nations and draw up a legally binding text on the material by 2024 — a kind of Paris Agreement on plastic.

• In addition to being based on fossil fuels, its biggest problem is the short life before it becomes a garbage that is difficult to degrade.
• Its residues, whether large or in microparticles, do not respect borders and spread across the seas, oceans and atmosphere, contaminating everything in sight.

In numbers: Every year, an amount of plastic waste is generated whose weight is equivalent to that of 35 thousand eiffel towers, or 350 million tons, according to OECD data.

Among the main objectives of the countries gathered in France is to increase the recycling of the material –today at 15%–, which would increase its “circularity”, that is, keep plastic items already produced in circulation for as long as possible.

To illustrate the problem more clearly, The Plastic Forecast project, or plastic forecast, calculates the amount of plastic that will rain in a day.

• The monthly average for Paris is almost 4 tons of material falling from the skies.
• The calculation is based on a combination of weather forecasts and information on the dynamics of plastic microparticles dispersed in the atmosphere.