oppn parties Is the Startup Space Getting Squeezed in India?

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  • Karnataka HC has ruled that a harassment complaint lodged by a wife after receiving a divorce notice from the husband loses its weight in the eye of the law and quashed the FIR filed by a women against her husband and in-laws
  • 35 people killed in renewed violence in Manipur, 30 of them militants
  • Manipur boils on the eve of Home minister Amit Shah's visit as militants strike, vandalize MLAs home and loot armouries
  • Kerala chief minister P Vijayan says Centre's decision to cut the borrowing limit of the state is 'sadistic' and shows its negative mentality towards the state's development
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  • Centre said that the march-to-Parliament by wrestlers was a 'deliberate provocation'
  • Prime Minister Modi inaugurates the new Parliament building, calls it 'cradle of empowerment'
  • Mamata Banerjee will most likely attend the opposition meet called by Nitish Kumar in Patna
  • With container prices, which were on fire, crashing by 40% YoY, importers and exporters in India heaved a sigh of relief as the burden of high freight costs will reduce
  • In an aim to push lenders to manage risks better after the US financial crisis, the RBI has reviewed bond value norms
  • 14 countries under the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework (IPEF), including India, entered into an agreement to boost supply chains and counter China
  • Malaysia Cup badminton- H S Prannoy wins the title beating Weng Hong Yang of China 21-19,13-21, 21-18
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  • IPL final washed out due to rain, rescheduled for today, the reserve day
  • In a shameful incident, Delhi Police manhandled international wrestlers when they sought to march peacefully to the new Parliament building to highlight their greivances, detained some top wrestlers
Fifth IPL title for Chennai as Ravindra Jadeja hits 10 off last two balls to spoil the party for Gujarat Titans
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Is the Startup Space Getting Squeezed in India?

By Sunil Garodia
First publised on 2016-05-31 11:18:29

About the Author

Sunil Garodia Editor-in-Chief of indiacommentary.com. Current Affairs analyst and political commentator.
Indian technology firms and high flying startups are facing a squeeze. The latest to create a flutter is L&T Infotech. It has cancelled the job letters it issued to many students as part of campus placements in 2015. Before this, ecommerce frontrunner Flipkart has ‘deferred’ the joining dates of its campus recruits. “Deferred" in most cases can be construed to mean cancelled. While this can be for a number of reasons, all indicators point to the fact that technology firms and startups are facing the worst time of their existence. It also means that campus placements with these firms will lose a lot of sheen.

Flipkart has been the worst hit in terms of damage to its brand equity in the investment and job market. First, its valuation has been successively downgraded – even by those who are invested in it for a long time. Realizing that the deep discounting model is not effective and profits are still a long way in coming, Morgan Stanley Mutual Fund Trust, which holds a percentage of Flipkart, lowered the valuation of the startup by 15.5% to $9.39 billion. Hence, Flipkart is now valued at almost 62% of $15 billion it was valued a year ago. Burning investors’ cash in giving huge discounts to customers without showing a clear business plan to bring in profits has made investors wary. Funds will not be easy to come by now.

Already, Fashionara, a high end ecommerce startup for selling garments, has closed shop. Zomato has scaled down its operations in nine countries including US in order to focus on profitable markets to consolidate revenues under pressure from investors. Food delivery startup TinyOwl has chosen to cater to just the Mumbai market for the time being, closing operations in all other locations. Helpchat has phased out the chat module of its app. Snapdeal lost its chief product officer, Anand Chandrasekharan, who left to strike out on his own.

Faulty business models, ill-conceived expansion policies and illogical hiring policies have now made startups unattractive to both investors and job-seekers. As valuations for existing firms go down, it will become tough for newbies to find investors willing to put their money in the absence of a solid business model that shows profits within a given time frame. Excesses, whether in payment of salaries, advertisement, discounting and expansion, will no longer be treated with patience. Along with technology and innovation, accounting will play a huge role in future investments in startups.