How Evergrande crisis will impact India

A new housing crisis unfolding in China is reminding many investors of the 2008 Financial Crisis. Evergrande is one of the world' most indebted real estate developers struggling to meet $300 billion of repayments to lenders.

But the looming Evergrande crisis has many implications for the Indian startup ecosystem as well, given the interconnected nature of economies and markets. 

Kumarpal Jain, Assistant Vice President, Finisto, a wealth-management platform, tells YourStory, 

"A severe deceleration in that industry, or worse, a debt explosion, could clobber the Chinese economy negatively and impact the rest of the world, particularly Asia."

However, the crisis opens a window of opportunity for India as well. India provides investors with an attractive alternative as it is the other emerging economy with growth characteristics similar to those in China.

"There is a very strong optimism in India, and it has never been like this before. India has become a trusted destination for foreign money. This is also another reason why there are so many unicorns in the market," Sreedhar Prasad, Advisor, Analyst, ex-KPMG, and ex-Kalaari Capital, said.

Click here to find some useful tools to help you find the nearest vaccine centres in real-time.

The Interview

As industries get more digitised and enabled by Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning, feedback loops are shrinking. In this new paradigm, customer experience has proven to be a driver to customise product experiences for users as well as partners.

At YourStory's Digital Pioneers Club, technology leaders from Google Cloud, Cure.fit, PhonePe, CarDekho, and CleverTap discuss the future of seamless customer experience.

Editor’s Pick: Product Roadmap

Kunal Prasad and Krishna Kumar founded CropIn in 2010 as they felt the agricultural sector needed technology disruption. They then developed a SaaS platform to analyse crop patterns, soil conditions, water stress risk, etc, across the country.

To make the farming community more efficient, CropIn developed two platforms — SmartFarm and SmartRisk, which enable farmers to improve the productivity of their crops. Read more.

Startup Spotlight

Skilling youngsters on stock trading

When student entrepreneurs Akash Jayan and Ritvik Vipin were looking at stock trading as a way of making money, across many YouTube strategies that didn't work. This led the duo to start Havenspire in 2019.

Havenspire is a Bengaluru-based bootstrapped startup that helps young people gain a better understanding of stock trading and markets. Read more.

News & Updates

• D2C fresh meat brand Licious entered the coveted billion-dollar unicorn club. The startup raised $52 million in a Series G round led by IIFL AMC's Late-Stage Tech Fund, with a valuation of $1 billion. Avendus FLF (Future Leaders Fund) also invested in this round.

• Bengaluru-based ride-hailing unicorn Ola has acquired Pune-based geospatial services startup Geospoc. Ola aims to build the next-generation location technology services with the latest acquisition.

• Car sharing marketplace Zoomcar has opened an office in San Francisco ahead of its US listing next year. The US office will further bolster Zoomcar's push to create a global car-sharing platform and prepare the company for its broader global marketplace.

• US-based dairy technology, services, and intelligence provider, Dairy.com, has made its first investment in India with the acquisition of Mr Milkman, a last-mile dairy supply chain SaaS platform. 

• The artificial intelligence (AI) market in India is expected to grow at a five-year CAGR of 20.2 percent and touch $7.8 billion in total revenues by 2025, according to research firm IDC. Businesses in India will accelerate the adoption of both AI-centric and AI non-centric applications for the next five years, IDC said.

Before you go, stay inspired with… 

“Although the funding for the D2C sector has grown significantly, FMCG is still not considered the most attractive category. We expect that Licious' unicorn status will change that.”

— Vivek Gupta and Abhay Hanjura, Co-founders, Licious

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