This Investor Believes that India has Arrived on the Global Market Scene in a Big Way According to this investor, the country has emerged as a lucrative market for products and services, and entrepreneurs now can do much more than just serving the US's IT sector
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Sudhir Sethi, Managing Partner and Founder, IDG Venture has been an active player in the Indian venture capital scene for almost two decades now. The man has seen the good, bad and ugly side of India's business ecosystem.
For this investor, the Indian market has matured in many ways as the quantum and quality of entrepreneurs is now far better than what it used to be. The country has emerged as a lucrative market for products and services, and entrepreneurs now can do much more than just serving the US' IT sector.
He feels that bad times are behind us and goes on to add, "Yesterday, the Indian market was emerging, today it has emerged."
While discussing India's funding environment, Sethi asserts that there is still a lot of capital available in the market and drew a comparison of the Indian startup buzz to something akin to the 'Brownian Movement'.
Sharing examples of some of the star acquisitions of this decade, he talked about startups like Flipkart, which acquired its portfolio company Myntra, FirstCry that bought Mahindra's BabyOye along with NestAway that purchased its rival company Zenify. Sethi feels acquisitions play an important role in the growth of India companies, which in turn also gives an exit opportunity to investors like him.
Moreover, exits in the last three years have done well as India accounts for almost 40 percent Asia's divestments. "So overall, in the last five years, the Indian venture ecosystem has performed at a 30° gradient but in the next five years, don't be surprised if it performs at 70° gradient," he projected.
During an interaction with Entrepreneur India in early October 2017, Sethi shared, "the broader thrust for at least us in the next five years is definitely IPOs because we have queues of companies lined up for that." Newgen Software is one such portfolio company which recently closed an IPO.
Meanwhile, IDG Ventures is one of the leading venture capital fund advisors in the country with USD 450 mn assent under management. The company is managing six funds, of which three are in-house and other three are Pandara Trust, Chiratae Trust and Technology Venture Fund with a special focus on sectors like consumer media, tech, cloud/software, healthtech and Fintech.
