The Great Indian Start-up Show: A look back
As we bid goodbye to 2014, it’s time to look back at the happenings of this year. This year was indeed a great year for the start-ups and entrepreneurs in India. With millions of funding pouring in throughout the year, start-ups achieving exponential growth and more people accessing internet, this year saw a great boost in entrepreneurial motivation of the people.
2014 started with India’s one of the most vibrant and followed start-up the ‘Aam Aadmi Party’ (AAP) coming into power. The AAP, which was founded in Nov 2012, overthrew the decade long established government in Delhi. It epitomized the power of passion and patience as its founding member struggled through the way to establish the government. The AAP truly displayed the entrepreneurial spirit during its rise by judiciously using its limited amount of resources to achieve the impossible.
We also saw Facebook’s debut acquisition in Indian market as it acquired Bangalore based Little Eye Labs in January, 2014. Little Eye Labs builds performance analysis and monitoring tools for mobile app developers.
In Feb 2014, Snapdeal received its 4th round of funding of $133 million. The 4th round of funding was led by eBay with all the current institutional investors. This was followed by the fashion e-commerce major Jabong which secured $27.5 million (Rs 173 crore) from the British finance development institution. The trend of funding continued with Yatra.com raising 140 crore INR in its fifth round of funding in April. Housing.com too joined the party by raising another $19 million in venture funding, led by Helion Venture Partners.
May 2014 can be considered as one of the most electrifying startup months of this year. Flipkart, India’s largest e-commerce firm, announced that it had bought Myntra, India’s largest online fashion retailer, in the biggest deal ever in India’s Internet space. The Bansal’s continued to raise $210 million investment taking the total funding in Flipkart to $750 million- the highest ever for any Indian startup. The high voltage did not stop here as Snapdeal soon announced that it has completed a new round of equity financing of $100 million. Snapdeal also attracted the attention of vintage biggies including Ratan Tata, Azim Premji with each contributing their share in the growth.
With only money pouring in and no exits so far, RedBus brought the first wave of optimism in the market. RedBus was sold to the Ibibo group for an enterprise value of over Rs 600 crore, making it then the biggest overseas strategic acquisition of an Indian internet asset. Additionally, the online ticketing company BookMyShow raised Rs 150 crore from investors, at a valuation of Rs 1000 crore.
Flipkart continued to suck money even in July whereas Amazon.in made the wild card entry with Jeff Bezos announcing a whopping $2 billion investment in India in the biggest corporate face off in India’s fledgling e-commerce sector.
While the Indian startups were busy playing in INRs and millions, Facebook acquired WhatsApp for an unprecedented $19 billion in October 2014. Although it didn’t have much of an effect in the Indian financial sector, it built hopes in millions of youngsters who have now started considering startups as one of the career options.
The rest was followed by Zomato , Snapdeal and Housing (again) raising funds in November and December, 2014 .The previous months also saw overseas investor like Softbank entering into buzzing start-up market. It is however only scratching the surface of what is happening in India right now, and what is likely to happen in 2015. The ecosystem is evolving very fast, and is being fuelled by private investors and a lot of passion. As we ring in the New Year we must surely recognize that 2015 promises to be a very exciting time for Indian startup sector, and something remarkable to be a part of.
Written by-Ravish Agrawal
