Indian companies, once prospering, are in for more suffering as the funding shortage gets worse

According to data from analytics firm CB Insights, Indian companies, startups in India raised just $2 billion in the first quarter of 2023, which is the lowest quarterly amount in almost three years and 75% lower than the same period last year.

As investors adjust to stretched valuations and failing consumption growth, a funding crunch at Indian startups that have already resulted in layoffs and postponed stock listings is expected to pave the way for industry consolidation.

According to data from analytics firm CB Insights, startups in India raised just $2 billion in the first quarter of 2023, which is the lowest quarterly amount in almost three years and 75% lower than the same period last year.

Startups may only raise less than $10 billion this year if things continue this way, a far cry from the record $30 billion they raised in 2021 and $20 billion in 2022.

Startups are negatively impacted by the slowdown, as is Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who has praised their success and referred to them as the “backbone of new India.” It might harm India’s job market and economic expansion.

“This is a fundamental reset, not just another blip,” declared V.T. Bharadwaj, the current managing partner of venture capital company A91 Partners and a former managing director of Sequoia Capital India. For at least a decade, “I don’t think I’ll again see a record fundraising year like 2021.”

With investors like Sequoia and Tiger Global placing large bets on companies that burned capital to entice customers in the 1.4 billion-person nation, many firms were able to reach multi-billion dollar valuations in recent years thanks to the possibility of rapidly expanding consumption both offline and in India’s digital environment.

The investment climate in India and elsewhere has been impacted by global issues including high rates and inflation; startup funding in the US declined by almost 50% to $32.5 billion in the first quarter, while it fell by 60% to $5.6 billion in China.

However, India’s startups have experienced a more severe cash crunch than their international counterparts. According to several CEOs, this is largely because investors realized they had underestimated consumer demand.

According to research released in April by the Indian venture capital firm Blume Ventures, consumption outside of the top 30 million Indian homes has dramatically decreased and is being driven by a “tiny superuser set”.

According to the paper, despite India’s population of over one billion people, state-backed digital money transfer service UPI is only used by 260 million people, while meal delivery business Zomato has only 50 million annual transacting customers.

Startups in India aren’t serving a billion customers. The same 100 million people are buying from all of them. Ankit Nagori, a former top executive of Walmart’s e-commerce subsidiary Flipkart and the current CEO of cloud kitchen company Curefoods, claimed that the (consumer) market appears to be 2-3 times exaggerated.

FEWER TRANSACTIONS, CONSOLIDATION IN THE AIR

The first indications of unhappiness in the Indian market were after the loss-making digital payments company Paytm’s failed IPO in 2021, which led investors and regulators to question if startup valuations were fair.

According to six investor sources and three company founders who spoke with Reuters, the funding environment will deteriorate over the next two years, and many multibillion-dollar companies will lower their values.

According to reports from the US investors, BlackRock internally cut the value of the Indian online education company Byju’s it invested in by half, to $11.15 billion from $22 billion, and Invesco cut the value of food delivery startup Swiggy by 25%, to $8 billion, in recent weeks.

In addition, only 271 Indian businesses raised funding in Q1 2023, down from 561 the previous quarter.

As it waits for additional valuation corrections, Japan’s SoftBank Group Corp., which for years led the funding boom in India, hasn’t made a single new investment there in the past 12 months, according to two individuals familiar with its intentions.

Despite being contacted for comment, SoftBank did not respond. By April of that year, according to calculations by Reuters, it had invested $3 billion in Indian companies in 2021 and an additional $500 million in 2022.

In the midst of all the suffering, banker Shivakumar Ramaswami has seen an opportunity and is establishing a new M&A desk at his tech-focused investment banking firm Indigoedge. Two of his colleagues are only charged with scouting for M&A prospects.

“So many sponsored firms reached a certain scale before stalling. Everyone needs a place to call home, and many of these businesses are unable to pursue an IPO. We are getting ready to collaborate with them,” he stated.