“You never know who's swimming naked until the tide goes out.”
These prophetic words from Warren Buffett capture the essence of today’s economic scenario. The global banking turmoil with SVB’s sudden collapse, Credit Suisse crisis etc.; significant layoffs; raise genuine concerns of a global recession & geopolitical shifts. These require startups to deal with the new realities of growth and funding.
Economic turbulence always exposes skeletons, the weakness of a business model to endure. Right cash reserves, unit economics and capital efficiencies will be the test of growth and leadership. Hope & opportunity emerges even in carnage, so for our ecosystem it isn’t a doomsday, rather a shift in focus and fundamentals.
Two factors, in my view, will be crucial in shaping India’s startup growth story over the next decade.
Capturing emerging tech trends, Generative AI for example: Every decade brings monumental changes in technology. Over the past 20 years, we’ve seen a proliferation of smartphones & mobile internet in India. Today, we stand at the cusp of the next wave of Tech transformations.
You’ve probably played around with ChatGPT and like me, been impressed by its human-like prowess as a question-answer chatbot. It opens new models of opportunity to add value in every sector such as law, real estate, education, healthcare or engineering, among others.
India built its UPI stack from the ground up as the world's largest digital public financial good, with the highest number of users and transaction volume. SaaS companies from India have been thriving. The opportunity for India to take the lead in the upcoming AI revolution is equally exciting. A whopping $500B could be added to the Indian economy by 2025 from AI alone.
But I’m also deeply concerned on how we navigate the ethical dilemmas that AI will present. What happens when AI becomes better than us at most cognitive tasks? If it’s easier to ask a machine to do stuff, will we have to reframe our purpose and refocus our efforts towards building a more creativity, leisure and service-based society?
Power of women: Another crucial aspect of India’s economic ascent in the coming decade will be increasing participation of women in our startup ecosystem and leadership roles. It is a cause I deeply care about, increasing women’s leadership opportunities. We, at Kalaari Capital, are committed to enabling and empowering more female founders and leaders across the startup ecosystem. At CXXO, we recently published “The State of Women Entrepreneurship Report” that examines the biases & obstacles women face today in setting up & running businesses. The purpose of this report is to create ideas, collaborations, and partnerships to collectively achieve the goal of #embracingequity.
At Kalaari, we’re committed to supporting the startup ecosystem and actively investing into disruptive ideas & transformational businesses. We have strong conviction that India’s growth story remains as compelling as ever and are excited to partner with visionary founders who are passionate about building a better tomorrow.
Best,
Vani Kola
Managing Director, Kalaari Capital
