Digital learning by compulsion or choice? With covid induced lockdowns, schools, colleges and tuition centers shut indefinitely, Edtech companies jumped at the opportunity of providing digital means to learning. Investors followed suit, and pumped billions into the sector. Resultantly, for 2 years, Edtech valuation swelled in India. Byju’s emerged as the Edtech behemoth, while several turned unicorn. But were they too naïve to think that digital learning will outlast the pandemic? Here's some insight into the recent turmoil in the industry: Physics Wallah, the new Edtech unicorn, and Unacadem ..read more

It was the year 1993 In an exhibition of automobile component manufacturers, the newly appointed chairman of Tata Sons, Ratan Tata announced his dream of manufacturing India’s first fully indigenous car. Remember, this was a time when the Indian automakers were importing several key auto parts to assemble a car in India. Naturally, the idea of developing the entire car comprising 3800 small parts, 700 dies and 4000 joints, out of Indian factories, met with criticism from the experts, given the country’s clear lack in infrastructure and know-how. Outcome? The Visionary trod on. After 6 years o ..read more

In Oct'21 Azim Premji wrote about ‘Why and How India is facing its most dire education emergency’, which highlighted the problem of inaccessibility of quality education by the underprivileged, especially during the pandemic. For us, this was a trigger. As we thought more on this subject, we realized that India's education system is fraught with many more challenges like – the traditional textbook oriented approach of teaching, inadequate remuneration of teachers, excessive academic pressure on students, and many more. And now, we’re wondering, Can edtech’s for-profit endeavors ever solve the ..read more

In this issue: How will Indian Startups Fair their Maiden Slowdown? Quick Commerce in India – A Deep Dive Podcast – Season 2, Episode 1 Around the World in a Blink – DALL-E2 Stake Grabs in Indian Startups – May’22 What else is Buzzing? HOW WILL INDIAN STARTUPS FAIR THEIR MAIDEN SLOWDOWN? The US markets entered Bear market regime last month, for the first time after March 2020. Investors had flocked to the flaunting promises made by the fancy technology companies. Technology became over-emphasized in all sectors and people were blindsided by the growth projections. The castle started shaking ..read more

“We make essential products from air, not oil” Just when carbon offsetting was seeing the light of the day, Twelve, an award-winning Startup based out of US, has gone a step ahead claiming that its proprietary technology of ‘carbon transformation’ can eliminate carbon emissions, by transforming CO2 into chemicals, materials and fuels that are conventionally made from fossil fuels. How do they do it?: Just like a plant in nature, they transform CO2 into useful products with just water and renewable energy as inputs, with zero harmful emissions, and only leave air and water as the by-products ..read more

If you’re a Startup founder and you’ve been wondering what’s the right number of ESOPs you should set aside for your employees, here’s our analysis that can help you to benchmark. We collated data of 50 Indian Unicorns to find out what’s the average percentage of shareholding that is usually set aside as ESOP pools: So, it’s absolutely normal to dish out up to 7.4% of your equity to the employees. But is it better if its higher than this? Should the senior executives get more ESOPs than the juniors? What should be the vesting period for different kinds of employees? We’ve identified 2 handboo ..read more

Time and again you must’ve heard in 2022 (42 times to be precise), that a Startup raised funds north of a hundred million dollars. Of course all the news about mammoth valuations took the limelight, but did you ever wonder where these Startups park these fat cheques until they actually want to use them? We handpicked 5 Unicorns which were flushed with accumulated funds of $2.19 Billion as at 31st March’22, and found out their strategy of dealing with idle funds. Here’s what it all boils down to: This article is a part of the January'23 edition of our Startup Newsletter. Here's the complete pu ..read more

For entrepreneurs, there’s a lot riding on the outcome of their negotiations with potential investors. The biggest trade off being between the funds they seek from the investors and the control that they’re willing to give away in return. Here’s what we found out by churning the data of India’s 88 Unicorns: Seed Stage – At the end of the seed round of funding, the founders were collectively left with a median ownership stake of 73%. However, founders of MamaEarth, DealShare and boAt retained over 90% stakes in seed stage. Series A – At the end of Series A round, founders retained a median ow ..read more

1 Agritech Unicorn – Despite the looming funding winter, Agritech startups raised over $500 Million in 2022, which is 3 times of the amount raised in 2020. As internet and fintech penetrate deeper into rural India, Agritech solutions are becoming increasingly sought after, making the sector all the more attractive for investors. In the past 2 years, several promising soonicorns have emerged like NinjaCart ($775M). WayCool ($775M) and DeHaat ($700M). As investors continue to bet big on the sector, we foresee emergence of at least 1 Agritech Unicorn in 2023. 2 Applications in Generative AI – Th ..read more

Big News: Zerodha posted its FY’22 numbers and ever since our minds have gone numb. But then again, it might be the winters, we’re not sure. The country’s largest online brokerage house recorded an 82% rise in y-o-y revenue, reaching ₹4,963 Cr. ($654 Mn) and a whopping ₹2,094 Cr. ($276 Mn) in PROFITS. To the uninitiated: Zerodha was founded by the Kamath Brothers (Nikhil and Nithin) back in 2010 with the mission to revolutionize the Indian stock brokerage industry. The company has never raised funds but still hopped on the Unicorn bandwagon by valuing itself at $1Bn for ESOP buybacks in 2020 ..read more