Course correction for Indian startups
The ‘startup winter’ has once again highlighted why entrepreneurs need to go back to the boardrooms and evaluate their fundamentals. While it is business as usual for some, thanks to funds raised last year, many are feeling the chill and slowing down the ‘burn’.
Hello Readers,
“Only when the tide goes out do you discover who's been swimming naked.”
The famous saying by Warren Buffett, one of the world’s most prolific investors, is quite applicable to what is happening in the Indian startup ecosystem right now.
The massive layoffs and dwindling funding on the back of a global market meltdown and consequent liquidity crunch have signalled the onset of the Indian ‘startup winter’.
Private equity and venture capital investments in April 2022 declined 27 percent year-on-year to $5.5 billion due to a slowdown in large startup investments, revealed an IVCA-EY report.
This comes after two years of skyrocketing valuations and fundraising. The liquidity crunch is an aggregation of multiple factors—global supply chain disruptions owing to lockdowns, the Russia-Ukraine war, meltdown in the global tech stocks, and spike in inflation and consequent hike in interest rates.
It is more heated after last year’s “overinflated euphoria” among investors, who signed big cheques for both early and growth startups, putting money more on a ‘vision’.
But who is likely to get more affected by the current market situation between early and growth-stage startups? Read more.
Editor’s Pick: KT Professionals’ good hair days
was started by Dhruv Sayani in 2016 under the parent company Crystal Plastics. He has built the brand from scratch, making keratin-infused hair care products for the urban population. In six years, the company has made its presence felt pan India. Read more.
Startup Spotlight
On-demand custom manufacturing services for OEMs
In 2011, Tamizh Inian, who worked for an industrial solutions provider as part of his company project, got an opportunity to work for Nanban, a Tamil remake of Bollywood movie ‘3 Idiots’. His team helped build a scooter prototype, which doubled up as a flour mill, for it.
What started as a project became a business opportunity for Tamizh. He continued to build similar prototypes, earning Rs 9 to 10 lakh per annum. Seeing the demand, he decided to capitalise on the success and set up in March 2021. Read more.
Top Stories of the Week
- Cloud kitchen and food delivery startup found itself suddenly short of revenues amid funding crunches, potential acquisition and the pandemic. Despite being stuck between a rock and a hard place, founder Rashmi Daga and her startup team remained resilient.
- After WittyFeed shut down overnight, entrepreneurs Vinay Singhal, Shashank Vaishnav, and Praveen Singhal were determined not to give up. The trio set out to build a 'Netflix for Bharat' and launched STAGE, an artist and dialect-based OTT platform for Indians. Today, the hyperlocal video entertainment platform has recorded more than two million downloads and has over one lakh paying customers.
- While Decentralised Autonomous Organisations (DAOs) can enable a decentralised future devoid of hierarchy, Apoorv Nandan and Vikram Aditya noticed that using them can be too complicated. So, they built tooling platform DAOLens to help DAOs onboard contributors.
- Sunny Leone continues to push the envelope. An actor, she has her own production company, cosmetics line, and lingerie brand. Now, she has ventured into gamification with 'I Dream of Sunny'—a product that combines NFTs, Artificial Intelligence (AI), fan verse, etc.
- NASSCOM Foundation helps people and institutions transform the way they tackle social and economic challenges through technology. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the Foundation impacted about 5.1 million people.
Before you go, stay inspired with…
“Cloud education is key to the success of India's large and diverse SMB market.”
— Puneet Chandok, AWS India and South Asia
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