Author
Vishal Krishna is a senior editor who covers the spirit of entrepreneurship. He has covered everything from startups to small businesses to large corporate. When he is not writing he indulges in music, aikido and sports.
The Big Billion days of Flipkart and the festival sale days of Snapdeal and Amazon have been a resounding success. Flipkart is said to have made 18 million deliveries, Amazon has made around 12 million and Snapdeal has made 14 million deliveries. Forget the gross merchandise value (GMV), which everyone claims will cross Rs 50,000 crore; it is rubbish, because all three etailers are set to make at least Rs 6,000 crore in gross profits from the festive season.
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Startups are the buzzword in the Indian economy and are the epicentre of economic activity. However, India is not a tax-friendly haven for startup investments and there are over 100 startups that have registered abroad. Most of the Indian startups register themselves in Singapore, the US or Hong Kong to raise capital.
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Third party logistics is a Rs 48,000-crore business. But how does one organise a rent seeking and unorganised business where technology is not the panacea? Hyper-local is suddenly the favourite word for investors. It has almost become a cliché with everyone seemingly having an opinion about the potential of such a business. Investors say it is the next big boom and is supposed to wipe out middlemen in the logistics trade. Recently Opinio Raised $7 million From Delhivery And Accel Partners. RoadRunnr too raised $11 million recently from Sequoia, Nexus Venture Partners and Blume Ventures. But who has got the metal to take on this industry by looking at the problems of logistics and delivery from the ground up, the history of the system, rather than throwing technology at it?
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It's not easy being a startup, especially when it has been funded well and commanded a stellar valuation. The curious case of Housing.com has got "curiouser" as it has seen a plunge in its valuation. A year ago when it had raised $100 million from Softbank, the PE company, the startup was valued at $400 million. In less than six months, the company is valued at less than $50 million. Sources close to BW|Businessworld say that a large listings and classified business approached the company to buy them out for as little as $30 million.
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Flipkart’s chief of commerce sees the ‘mobile-only’ strategy as the future of retailing, as mobile provides better search and geopositioning and exact recommendations
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The flavour seems to have returned to lending capital to small and medium businesses. Ten years ago private banks like ICICI and HDFC Bank increased their retail lending. In less than two years the global crisis, along with increased defaults in the Indian small business industry, compelled the banks to rein in their lending to the small businesses. Most of the loans, in the early 2009, ended up recovering only 75 per cent of the the total loan value.
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