Are there any profitable Indian startups?
I'm talking about real profits, startups that generate good revenue and do not depend on VC money.
VC funding based on revenue multiples and profit (๐๐๐) multiples is soon going to be obsolete.
Common sense says company's valuation should be summation of yearly profits it can generate till the company exists...
So if reliance has profit of 8 billion $ , market estimates that it's valuation should be around 25x multiple of its profit that is to say that if reliance keeps on generating same amount of profit for year on year, it will not exist after 25 years.
Now tell me, what shelf live does these VC funded startup have?
I honestly don't see all these tom dick and Harry mobile based and web based startups existing by end of this decade thanks to AI revolution.
People are still oblivion to what AI will do to white collar jobs
Just out of curiosity, is there any single VC funded Indian startup in last 10-15 years which is immensely profitable ?
Or for that matter any global giants like Amazon, Uber, Airbnb etc. which has turned profitable in Indian territory?
in 1680-1720 Netherland were marine power which made British to look for opportunities in India for their spice trade. After Netherland collapsed it was France and Spain and their military dominated , so does their business and trade. Later it was British and now US
Same way if US hegemony ends all these VC and debt money will be affected. Major startup revolves around the idea of debt and low interest money foundation.
Country like India which cannot make important iphone parts and does only assembling of parts from china, our people take immense pride in made in india iphones. My criticism is country which doesnโt have good manufacturing capability and directly jumped to service sector.
All these Indian elites didnโt care for people rather focused on weakening the rupees so that they can make more money in service sector. Still freshers get โน3L labour work in top IT of this country.
I guess I diverted but I will take my time and write about why Indian startup are derailing our ecosystem. Soon post this here by Monday as it my special day ( labour day ๐)
Wow that answer. Grapevine should have gold that can be given to users when such answers happen. Team Grapevine please have a look
this isnโt even tip of iceberg, wait till I will explain of you Chinese startup is excelling and how their ecosystem is ahead of even US.
In short i would say they focused on manufacturing then realised population decline and shifted to robot automation and how Chinese people consider mathematics as art which resulted in their strong algorithm domination.
Problem with Indian market is most users are low LTV, so that puts Indian B2C startups at a disadvantage as compared to their US counterparts.
However, there are B2B indian startups which are profitable.
Also, regarding Uber/Airbnb which are "Global giants", even without considering Indian territory, Uber is still not profitable and Airbnb achieved first profitable business only in fy22
itโs not people, informal sector folks spend on street foods , they will not have problem in spending on apps thatโs convenient.
The problem is infrastructure, eg. Zo.ato will make lavish app for ordering food but their delivery infrastructure is poor. They canโt improve it coz it about ecosystem which we donโt have. Ecosystem in the sense better roads, traffic then good policies for delivery employees , their social issues and similar things
sector and ecosystem build on the basics of serving western master couldnโt focus of needs of common indian. Personally I never find valuable purpose for using many apps frequently. Thatโs opinionated for me but thatโs how i felt
I guess youโre right! InMobi is profitable, B2B companies in India serving global audience kind of are profitable.
But let me counter that by saying real money gaming apps and gaming generally as a category is profitable in India. Lotโs of bootstrapped companies are doing really well.
Case in point Games24/7, Octro (raised one round from Sequoia, never had to raise another), Nazara games (went public)
Googlers should be the last to talk about where AI is headed as after a decade of chest thumping AI in every other sentence and billions down the train they have ..... Bard.
I bet your Twitter too is a simp account for big tech and mainstream ideas. I'm sure you're well versed with transformers, LSTMs and all those simple DL concepts to say that BARD is absolute shit as compared to GPT, right? Bro, BARD was deployed as a necessity, disbanding all AI Alignment work for a while. None of us understand these models capabilities.
How am I a simp for big tech when I just criticized big tech? And what AI alignment are you talking about?
This isn't going to change anytime soon. India has long way to go for being a manufacturing hub or building businesses that require cutting edge research.
Manufacturing has been India's Achilles heal. We have R&D centers in India for chip designs by all major companies like NVIDIA, Intel, AMD but local govts not incentivizing the setup of FABs in India has caused a lot of damage. Also we're not a copper rich country. Red Taping by bureaucrats and shielding of public sector companies like CDAC, BEL, BHEL by govt has caused a damage as well.
My dad once went to HAL for some work and the work done their for a research organization is dipshit. They're more of govt employees than engineers or scientists.
The loss making consumer companies can survive only if they can build a innovation specific to their space and monetize the same.
Amazon did that with AWS, Paytm kind of with Soundbox.
Can Swiggy, Zomato, Zepto, Blinkit et all so a drone innovation like Zip line instead of cutting poor delivery boys pay?
Can Magicbricks, Nobroker, 99acres map every house in every city ona Blockchain with reviews on property, owner and tenant with a exact estimate of the market value, rent and sell it and service?
That's the thing right. Start-ups don't have to be profitable to make it big.
Are Swiggy and Zomato profitable? No.
But they are gonna be here for the next decade.
Not unless somehow they keep pushing their valuation, so every old and new investor can make profit from it. Just a personal anecdote, might even survive if they really change consumer habits to be more lazy and pay higher, else to grave.
I'm talking about real profits, startups that generate good revenue and do not depend on VC money.
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