- Unicorns realised that they were just a paper-corns. Most of them are challenged by their global counterparts.
- We have 2 India - Digital (one that deals online) and Analog (one that deals in cash)
- Funding is down by almost 50%. Unicorns are struggling - but that’s a good sign. There was too much of easy money.
- Bootstrapping is still underrated.
- There are 2 faces investors have these days - One on twitter (where they talk a lot of sense) and another one is the real face where they are still investing in karts/apps. Which one to believe?
- Tiger and Softbank exit from India has sent the wrong signals to the world.
- Balance of Power has shifted to investors. It was with startups till 2015, but now investors are calling it a shot.
- Edutech is hot. Thanks to Byju’s. For others, it’s business as usual.
- Foodtech is over. Suddenly, investors realised that there was actually no tech in foodtech and all the 2014-15 money just went down the shithole.
- Healthtech is as hot as 2010.
- Fintech is either Payment wallet or Lending. It will be a lot more than this.
- Startups went back on promises made to employees who were laid off for no fault of theirs.
- Trusting startups has become tough - as a customer, as a candidate and even as a partner.
- Startup journalism is the new swag.
- Startup journalism is pretty much over. It’s either about sucking up (all good stories) or bringing startups down. No perspective building. No questions being asked.
- There is a rush among startup and tech journos to explore future or explore the past (numbers, predictions, heck-i-told-you moment), but nobody wants to look at the present and ask tough questions.
- Hiring is down. This has made it comparatively easy for not-so-well-funded startups to hire good talent.
- Great employees are bored. Totally!!!
- Nothing exciting is happening at unicorns and similar companies. The biggest beneficiary? Well funded not-of-Indian-origin companies who are poaching these fellas.
- There are vey very few new sexy business ideas right now in the ecosystem.
- As an ecosystem, we have taken ourselves too seriously. Everybody is too serious. There is very little fun left.
- Very few startups are solving hard problems.
- Very few investors are even interested in startups that are solving hard problems.
- Traction metrics have gotten tough now. Earlier it used to be downloads, pageviews etc.
- Indian ecosystem has more startup events than the number of serious startups.
- India had more startup awards than startups exits.
- Most startups exits were acquihires.
- Investors are selling off their portfolio companies to each other.
- Hackathons are dead. They are hireathons now.
- Local language is super hot. Just that we don’t have enough founders taking a shot at it.
- Bots - Nobody knows what it is. But everyone wants to build/invest in one. It’s the new sexy/hot/trending phenomena.
- Clearly, product management is not a thing among Indian startups.
- Growth hacking = SEO etc, but not product thinking.
- Indian founders learnt all the wrong things from China and Silicon Valley. Hustling from China and fund raising smarts from Silicon Valley. Frankly, China is about deeper consumer behaviour understanding and SV is a lot about growth hacking/scale thinking.
- Top industries facing the impact of slowdown in startup space are : PR firms, Interior designers, Hiring consultants, print/TV media.
- In 2015, several funds and mafia houses came up with a formula to run a startup and make some serious quick money. Thankfully, the markets don’t care and all these stories are over now.
Source:
https://www.nextbigwhat.com/indian-startup-ecosystem-2016-297/
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