iWorld
Covid relief: Indian YouTubers team up to raise Rs 50 lakh
KERALA: To aid India’s Covid relief efforts, Slayy Point, a YouTube channel run by Abhyudaya Mohan and Gautami Kawale, and Mythpat, along with OpraahFx, an influencer marketing firm hosted a seven-hour long charity stream on 25 April and raised Rs 50 lakh.
The entire amount will be donated to the Hemkunt Foundation, the non-profit organisation at the frontlines of helping Covid patients avail hospital beds, oxygen and other medical necessities.
The YouTube live stream was hosted by Slayy Point on Mythpat’s YouTube channel. Over 35 Indian influencers and YouTubers including Techno Gamerz, Kusha Kapila, Technical Guruji, Salonayy, Total Gaming, Ashish Chanchlani, Mythpat, Carry Minati, Viraj Ghelani, Abish Mathew, Ankush Bahuguna, BeYouNick, Tanmay Bhatt, Ranveer Allahbadia and Dolly Singh joined the live stream.
The Covid fundraising effort organised by YouTubers is now receiving positive responses from all corners. Popular YouTuber Ashish Chanchalani expressed gratitude to Mythpat and Slayy Point for coming up with an initiative that could help India fight the second wave of the deadly pandemic.
Today the Indian youtube community raised 50 lakh rupees by coming together and entertaining our amazing audience
We are all glad we could do this together
Big thanks to @mythpat @SlayyPoint for organizing this.
These donations will now go to Hemkund foundation for oxygen— Ashish Chanchlani (@ashchanchlani) April 25, 2021
Amid all these relief efforts, India is facing the heat of the resurgent Coronavirus. On Tuesday, the country witnessed more than 3,79,000 coronavirus positive cases and 3,645 deaths. With the number of positive Covid cases rising dramatically across the nation, the entire healthcare infrastructure is also facing a crunch.
It was in 2020 that Slayy Point became a viral sensation. Abyudaya and Gauthami, last year, decided to examine the comments section of their channel, and in a video titled ‘Why Indian Comments Section is Garbage (BINOD)’, the duo portrayed some weird comments that appeared on their channel. One of those comments was written by a person named Binod Tharu, and it just contained his first name ‘Binod’. The name became the defining meme of the year and also helped the channel scale new heights of internet stardom.
iWorld
Bill Ackman makes a $64bn bid for Universal Music Group
The hedge fund boss wants to list the world’s biggest record label in New York and thinks he knows exactly what ails it
NEW YORK: Bill Ackman wants to buy the world’s biggest record label. Pershing Square Capital Management, the hedge fund run by the billionaire investor, submitted a non-binding proposal on Tuesday to acquire all outstanding shares of Universal Music Group in a business combination transaction worth roughly $64.4 billion (around 55.8 billion euros).
Under the terms of the offer, UMG shareholders would receive 9.4 billion euros in cash, equivalent to 5.05 euros per share, plus 0.77 shares of a newly created company, dubbed New UMG, for each share held. Pershing Square values the total package at 30.40 euros per share, a 78 per cent premium to UMG’s closing price on April 2.
The deal would see UMG merge with Pershing Square SPARC Holdings, with the combined entity incorporating as a Nevada corporation and listing on the New York Stock Exchange. New UMG would publish financial statements under US GAAP and become eligible for S&P 500 index inclusion. Pershing Square says the transaction is expected to close by year-end, with all equity financing backstopped by Ackman’s firm and its affiliates, and all debt financing committed at signing. The transaction would cancel 17 per cent of UMG’s outstanding shares, leaving New UMG with 1.541 billion shares outstanding.
Ackman has a long history with UMG. Pershing Square first bought approximately 10 per cent of the company from Vivendi in the summer of 2021 for around $4 billion, around the time of UMG’s listing on the Euronext Amsterdam exchange. He has since trimmed that position, raising around $1.4 billion from the sale of a 2.7 per cent stake in March 2025, and resigned from UMG’s board in May 2025, citing new executive and board obligations arising from recent investments.
His diagnosis of UMG’s troubles is blunt. The company’s stock has fallen around 33 per cent over the past twelve months on the Euronext Amsterdam exchange, and Ackman lays out six reasons why. These include uncertainty around the Bolloré Group’s 18 per cent stake in the company, the postponement of UMG’s US listing, the underutilisation of UMG’s balance sheet, the absence of a publicly disclosed capital allocation plan and earnings algorithm, a failure to reflect UMG’s 2.7 billion euro stake in Spotify in its valuation, and what Ackman calls suboptimal shareholder investor relations, communications and engagement.
The Bolloré stake has long cast a shadow over the company. Cyrille Bolloré stepped down from UMG’s board in July 2025 as the Bolloré Group battled the French financial markets regulator over its stake in Vivendi, which holds a further capital interest in UMG. UMG had confidentially filed a draft registration statement with the US Securities and Exchange Commission in July 2025 for a proposed secondary listing in America, but put those plans on hold in March 2026, citing market conditions.
Ackman has kind words for UMG’s management, at least. “Since UMG’s listing, Lucian Grainge and the company’s management have done an excellent job nurturing and continuing to build a world-class artist roster and generating strong business performance,” he said. But he made his diagnosis plain: “UMG’s stock price has languished due to a combination of issues that are unrelated to the performance of its music business and importantly, all of them can be addressed with this transaction.”
In other words, Ackman believes UMG is a great business trapped inside a broken structure. If the board agrees, he intends to fix that, loudly and in New York.
