#109 - The Great Indian Startup Fundraise

Bharatvaarta

We have seen a spate of startup funding activity in recent times. Just in the last couple of weeks we have seen Fintech startup, Groww, raised $83 million in its Series D funding, in a round led by Tiger Global; Gupshup raised a 100M from Tiger again; sharechat raised 500M from Tiger too; Meesho raised 300M from Softbank; epharmacy startup Pharmeasy raised 350M, Cred raised 200+ million from Falcon Edge. There have been 10 unicorns created in this year already! And this is aside from more mature startups like Zomato and Policy Bazaar raising large rounds ahead of their proposed IPO this year. To make sense of all of this, we invited Nimish Joshi (Senior Corporate Development Exec) and Rajeev Mantri (Managing Director, Navam Capital) on the podcast. Nimish and Rajeev begin with describing the significance of the current fundraising frenzy and then talk abou how the Indian startup ecosystem has evolved and why it’s attractive for investors at the moment. Along the way they also discuss nuances of listing in the Indian markets through IPO, second order effects of the fundraising, and criticism on sacrificing profits for growth. We end with our guests talking about sectors that are ripe for innovation and will attract more capital in the time to come. This is a very comprehensive overview and is unmissable for anyone interested in Indian startups. This podcast is available on YouTube, Apple, Google, Spotify, Breaker, Stitcher, and other popular platforms. If you like this episode, then please rate, subscribe and share! For more information, do check out www.bharatvaarta.in.