PE/VC’s & STARTUPS:

Entrepreneur: A madman, a storyteller, visionary, believer, and not the one amidst the crowd. The one who visualizes his path and walks along by creating one.

Talking about Entrepreneurs, makes us look at the startups that have been built over the years with some of them increases exponentially.

With respect to India, the year 2020 saw a major setback in terms of economic growth causing a GDP contraction of 7.3% and leading to the highest-ever annual fiscal deficit at 9.5% for the fiscal year 2021. Despite the second wave, the markets witnessed a major comeback recovering a lot of what was lost in terms of stock market gains.

Along with this, the private equity markets saw robust growth in the year 2021 with a majority of the PE investors and VCs almost doubling their investments. There was an approximate investment of $15 billion in investments in the first half of 2021 alone. To put this in perspective, this was 50% higher than the whole of 2020 and 3 times more than the first half of 2020.

Overall, an investment of USD 77 billion in Indian companies in 2021, a jump of 62 percent over the previous year. These investments were across 1,266 deals, including 164 large deals worth $58 billion.

Top deals:

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Indian Startups:

The year saw an addition of 44 unicorns or start-ups valued at over USD 1 billion, making India the third-largest home for such companies. The $23.4 billion invested into the Information Technology sector dominated the list of Unicorns.

The startup ecosystem saw a record investment of nearly $36 billion in 2021. One of the reasons for this was the growth in digitization due to the pandemic. UK-based Investment data platform Preqin estimates that venture and private equity investments increased three-fold during the year up from the $11 billion mopped up by Indian startups in 2020.

The majority of the investments that had happened were directed towards pre-IPO financing in companies such as Zomato, Ola, Paytm, etc.

Seed deals:

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Funds such as Tiger Global, Falcon Edge, Sequoia Capital, Accel, Blume Ventures were among the most active investors this year. SoftBank, which is known for its larger-sized bets, invested more than 3 billion, making it the largest infusion in Indian startups by the Japanese investment firm in India in a single year.

To conclude, most investments were seen in sectors like web3/ crypto, SaaS, direct-to-consumer or D2C brands and fintech, business-to-business (B2B) commerce, edtech, and healthcare.

Though the funding raised increases the valuations for the firm that does not really go hand in hand with the profitability of the firm, it can also help for a great exit.

That being said, the major purpose of this was to know how accessible currently the market is for the early stage and in-market entrepreneurs to scale at a level that they visualize.

What do you think?

  • Are the investments justified? Or it is just a valuation game?
  • On the other end, how positive are you on the Indian startup ecosystem?
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It says that the country is a “bright spot” amid decelerating capital flow in the region.

Investment in ESG assets more than doubled, from around 5 per cent over the last few years to 13 per cent of India’s overall PE-VC investments to 2022, witnessing nearly $7.9 billion in deal value.

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Always Investments are valuation game between institutional investors & Founders.

If …say seqoia capital invest in a company & got a pie, tiger global will feel indirect gravity to do the same thing.

So always valuation rockets for demand & company’s claims/target widens, Say If company reached those targets, probably they will be among fast growing company than other traditionally started companies.

But you know, Nothing work like this, Everyone wants money so, Investor always invests even if they know the company can’t make it…just because of peer pressure… liquidating at the correct time is the game between institutional investors.

At the end, naive retail investors are the one’s left holding the bag!

But the people who came to share market previously(when a big bunch arrived on 2019,2020) are now skeptical with IPOs (that’s a good thing, only good company will get money & people will get real value)

In US, there’s SPACs which works in grey area of regulations & allows companies to indirectly IPO in exchange without going in the regulatory route.

Thanks, to strict SEBI that’s not something possible in India but You can say this much strictness is quite hard to cope up for businness but good for people.

You know the money making investors puts pressure on founders, & founders in-turn have a unrealistic targets!

This kind of things,spiral into companies like Gomechanic :man_shrugging:t2:

You can take byjus,zomato, many other edtechs for example…they lack humanness in their company & just behave like zombie for targets & money! (Without exactly serving for customers,they are serving for their targets)

A good example would be zomato sending quirky notifications…they increase interactions with their app & shows this to investors…but this are artificially made interactions, why would a food ordering app needs interactions per se (just genuinely thinking to help customers would make them to do things in different way)
But they themselves put in the situation & atlast blames the situation for thier mistake …when asking!

This is just of one type of thing… there’s many … probably!

This are the bad things happening!

I hope…it will mature. As People are skeptical on IPOs & govt is strict so, inturn it makes investors to make only good investments & we get quality companies & good founders!

But we are the second largest startup ecosystem beating china.

It is also because external things (like china’s realtionship with west) but anyway we are & will be second probably!

There’s also many good company’s forming…you can take examples of paytm’s unique solution for merchant (don’t take paytm…but their action is quite good, this probably because the investor’s expectations reduced & they focused on creating genuine value) (I am sure you know this)

&

Take a check on zetwerk! (There’s many…but this is the one company…that I have in my mind now)

:point_up_2:t2: They made unique solution for India. Probably they will contribute to Dollars in our treasury & increase our raw materials import.

There’s many companies like zetwerk is popping all across countries like UK etc…,

But zetwork has early mover advantage…you can say a hidden gem :slightly_smiling_face: & has potential to be a important company.

Here’s a article referring to that company

But still whetever good profit making companies, we have in India are bootstrapped & Old.

We need time to see a good vc-funded company.

So, what I am saying is …yes not all Investments are justified but that’s ok!
It will be a good thing in overall long run!

This issues are quite common in developing startup ecosystem. Even now…developed markets have these issues even US.

So, I am overall positive on Indian startup ecosystem.

There’s so much untapped potential.

Many people are yet to earn & will be middle class in near future…so I am so much positive !

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And Indian Bureaucracts are also young & giving innovative solutions for India

Take UPI, ONDC for example.

Nowadays, Bureaucracts, founders & every Indian is quite positive of Indian economy.

Even Institutional Investors also.

So, these positive narratives will inturn compounds & make actions, we will reap all those benefits :tada:

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