Dexter Rewind — April 2022
We at Dexter Angels are excited to bring our monthly newsletter Dexter Rewind — A carefully curated scoop of everything noteworthy happening in the business and startup community. We serve the best of the month with a hint of insightful analysis, offering you the perfect read as you sip your favourite coffee.
So sit back, relax and read on…
Monthly Recap
The month of March was yet another high for the Indian startup ecosystem which continues to deliver a stunning performance with 4 more start-ups added in the ever-expanding Indian unicorn club.
We also witnessed a large number of investments in the neo-banking sector, an increasing craze with quick food delivery platforms and a greater involvement of the government institutions with the growing entrepreneurial wave of the country. With all the hype around multiple IPOs, this month we also witnessed some concerns raised by regulatory bodies over high valued loss-making startups filing for IPOs.
Here is a recap of all things important
The month started high on drama when our favourite shark (or not?), Ashneer Grover announced his resignation as the Managing Director of $2.5 billion BharatPay which had started as a feud with the company board alleging Grover of committing financial regularities.
Speaking of drama… Zomato made quite a stir online with the announcement of its 10-minute-food delivery announcement. Before we could digest, there was enough on the internet from calling it a brilliant move to one which would do more harm than any benefit. Eager to see (and also taste!) how it pans out for Zomato.
To clarify and curb the backlash, Zomato CEO Deepinder Goyal had to put up a clarification post stating that the service will only be available for standardised menu items with no penalties on the delivery personnel for late deliveries.
There is more to food with Zomato extending a $150 million loan to Blinkit (previously, Grofers), to help Blinkit with its severe cash-crunch. The move is being seen by experts in alignment with Zomato’s future talks of merger with Blinkit.
As the startup IPO craze continues, SEBI has raised its concerns over the valuations of loss making entities filing for IPOs. PayTM, among many others, has been on SEBI’s radar as its share prices fall consistently ever since it released its IPO in November 2021. RBI has also banned the startup from on-boarding any new customers.
These concerns led SEBI to include additional requirements for IPOs filings. Result being? More valuation filings, more scrutiny and more paperwork indeed.
We know profit sharing is great to grow and sustain a start-up. But what’s even better? Urban Company announcing allotment of Rs. 150 crore stock options to its partner workers which includes — cleaners, groomers, electricians etc. through a Partner Stock Ownership Plan (“Psops”). Yes, you thought right, they are similar to Esops and will be allotted over the next five to seven years.
Lastly, your age-old Nokia brick phone is not all that useless anymore with RBI’s latest offering that would let you use digital payment services on feature phones. The service called UPI123Pay aims to include the 40 crore existing feature phone users in India in the digital India revolution. A similar revolution is also brimming across agri-tech start-ups which will now get a boost with the government funding close to 800 startups under its Agripreneurship programme for innovation in agriculture.
What’s brewing at Dexter?
The month of March at Dexter saw the team travel across the sub-continent; touching base at Pune, Kolkata and Hyderabad to act all serious as we adjudged a host of startup competitions.
We went, we judged and we were stoked to see the entrepreneurial enthusiasm across the country. This wave is surely worth spreading and we did our bit with a little doze of encouragement to these next bunch of unicorn builders.
Meanwhile, our portfolio companies have also been going places and we would never want to miss a chance to boast about them. Here is a quick round up of what our startup founders have been upto
Tagz
After making strong inroads in the Indian markets, Tagz has started international expansion and launched in Geant Hypermarket Dubai.
Flatheads
Flatheads has recently launched the women’s footwear line on the occasion of International Women’s Day. The company also showcased their collection at the Dubai Expo.
Rezo
Rezo’s Co-Founder and Chief Data Scientist, Rashi Gupta (Ph.D) was awarded the Technology Woman Entrepreneur Of The Year award at BW Disrupt Women Entrepreneurship Awards 2022.
Freshhaat
The company has recently launched another 2 stores for offline and online delivery of fresh fruits and veggies in Gurgaon, taking the overall count to four.
Healthysure
Healthysure has recently launched HS Plus Program — a privileged membership offering exclusive health and wellness deals for the Dexter Angels portfolio companies and network with benefits worth ₹1,00,000.
Neuropixel
Neuropixel was selected as one of the AI Startups as part of the RevvUP accelerator by Telangana AI Mission (T-AIM).
Got content craving?
We’ve got it covered as we find the next book to keep us up all night, write-ups that would help us get over our afternoon slumps and podcasts that’d surely help ease our bumpy car rides. Dexter Discovers packs the best picks of all that we read, saw and heard throughout the month, delivered right in your inbox.
Here is the list of this month’s picks:
- Indus Valley Annual Report 2022 consolidated by Sajith Pai and Amal Vats of Blume VC
The report, as the name suggests, provides an in-depth analysis of India’s vibrant startup ecosystem spread across the length and breadth of the country, often boastful of its unique ‘jugaad’ mindset. Do read it for deeper insights on what is going in our very own startup valley and what to expect in future. - India Venture Capital Report 2022 by Bain & Company
The report by Bain & Company is an extensive recap of all things great witnessed in the Indian ecosystem, particularly the growing confidence of the investors with a series of unicorns and IPOs announced last year. The Report also provides funding trends in the much intriguing Web 3.0 segments — crypto, DeFi and NFTs. - Erik Torenberg’s “How to grow the startup economy”
In this intriguing post by Torenberg, he explains the concept of startup economy as a sum total of economic value created by startups and explains how its growth depends on the three critical factors of — Builders, Capital and Customers. The article is great to understand the ecosystem from the macro perspective and what it takes to create an inclusive economy based on innovation.
Deep Dive
Research, statistics, data helps us stimulate our intellectual hunger to go deep and understand some of the most promising developments across business, technology and innovation. At Deep Dive, we nerd it out with the latest and bring to you sound analysis and understanding of what is going around the world.
India goes virtual with its own digital currency: What to expect?
Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) has been the new fad ever since our finance minister announced that the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) will be introducing our very own CBDC.
Apparently, the RBI has been working on Indian CBDC for close to two years now but many are looking at this announcement with a lot of scepticism.
So we thought of getting an understanding of what exactly is a CBDC, is the fad worth it and what to expect from RBI’s CBDC.
What is CBDC?
CBDC, as the name suggests, is a digital payment instrument issued and regulated by a country’s central bank, RBI, in case of India.
In simple terms, a CBDC will be a digital banknote. It could be used to make our everyday transactions at the grocery store or between countries to settle their fat bills. (BIS 2020,3).
But isn’t that similar to an e-wallet?
No, it isn’t. CBDCs are not hard cash but virtual money minted using blockchain technology, just like that used for minting cryptocurrency. It’s not the same as cryptocurrency either. It’s more like a competitor for cryptocurrency.
Remember how our government couldn’t really make up their mind about what to do about all that crypto craze? So instead, they decided to jump onto the digital bandwagon and there emerged the idea of CBDC — A legally recognised digital currency issued by the RBI.
Are we the first ones to do it?
No, we are not. There are at least 16 other countries including Israel, Russia, Japan and Australia who seem to be exploring the idea of a CBDC.
Fun Fact: The internet traces the first form of CBDC to the 1990s with the roll out of Finland’s Avant e-money.
So, clearly we aren’t first in this race.
But why CBDCs?
Because, like we said, nobody wants to miss out on what’s trending.
Not even the government.
Most of the governments are still at the developing stage of CBDCs and yet to completely understand their use-cases. But a major reason for them is indeed the need to control de-centralised digital currency transactions.
Governments around the world love control. And cryptocurrency, which works on a decentralised system is an antithesis to control.
A CBDC, on the other hand, is a part of the country’s banking system and by encouraging public to use them over crypto, any government can hope to get back their control while letting you mint on the internet.
You get CBDC. They get control. It’s a win-win! (Or so they’d like us to believe)
Anything else CBDCs can do in the future?
An interesting use-case of CBDCs being developed is cross-border transactions.
Singapore and Canada have already started successful experimentation with cross-currency / cross-border transactions between the two countries in what has been called Project Ubin.
What is India planning to do?
Probably follow the suit of Project Ubin and pay some hefty bills using CBDCs.
Earlier this year, Finance Minister on the announcement of release of India’s CBDCs stated that the government is eyeing on easing large transactions between countries and institutions using CBDCs.
Indian government has given the task of developing and regulating the digital currency to RBI with a focus on cross-border transactions.
The use-cases of digital currency in the Indian market can be multi-fold but many suggest that large scale use of CBDCs can take at least five to seven years.
Similar to Nigeria’s successful efforts of financial inclusion using its own digital currency e-Naira, we are hoping that CBDCs in India have something similar to offer to the general public; drive financial inclusion in remote and disconnected areas and provide solutions which cater to sectors beyond large-scale industries.
At Dexter Angels we are driven by technology as a source of innovation and are eager to see how CBDCs unfold in the Indian economy.
Deal makers
It’s been raining deals for the Indian startup sector.
The month of March witnessed addition of four more startups to the billion dollar club — Games 24x7, Zeta, CommercelQ and Cred Avenue. We also saw Zomato making strides with funding Mukunda, a food robotics firm for $5 million.
OLA Electric is not far behind in making strategic investments with its latest being Israel based fast battery charging startup, SuperDot. We also saw Oxyzo, lending platform for SMEs receive the largest ever series A funding of $200 million.
In the world of meta verse, we saw FanCraze — a digital collectibles company (NFTs anyone?) get some crazy funding by Insight Partners.
And at last, Kitchens@ and Kitchens Centre took the cake away as they merged to build the largest cloud kitchen industry in the country.
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