Down rounds and exits are not new for Indian start-ups. Venture Intelligence data show that many companies had raised funding at reduced share price in the 2013-15 period as well. For example, Fashion and You, backed by VC firms such as Norwest Venture Partners, Intel Capital and Sequoia Capital India, saw a deep discount to its November 2011 valuation, during its June 2014 funding round.
The acquisition of Commonfloor by Quikr is said to be at a discount to the $160-million valuation that Google Capital funded it at. Likewise, Baby Oye’s acquisition by the Mahindra group is another exit that is said to have led to losses and write-offs for investors such as Accel Partners and Tiger Global.
The article further states that one can expect the following trends going forward:
1. Fire sales for weak businesses may continue
2. Sliding valuations may only pinch B2C e-commerce start-ups, as they saw the steepest rise. B2B plays were never a part of this wave per se. Their valuations may continue to be suppressed but they are unlikely to bear any brunt of down rounds – Karthik Reddy, Blume Ventures.
3. Among B2C businesses, those that have multi-channel distribution may not suffer as much as Internet-only players and that investors typically have protections and may not be impacted – Sarath Naru, Managing Partner, Ventureast
4. Big players have collected a war chest and may defer equity capital raise. With growth happening, founders will (also) look at debt options such as loan against receivables when they need funds – Shailesh Ghorpade, Managing Partner and CIO, Exfinity Venture
The question of write downs and valuation expectations was also discussed in Apex ’16 – The Indian Private Equity & Venture Capital Summit by panelists like K Ganesh of Growth Story; Ben Mathias of Vertex Ventures; Shailesh Ghorpade of Exfinity Ventures etc. Catch the ET Coverage of the same below:
Venture Intelligence is India’s longest serving provider of data and analysis on Private Company Financials, Transactions (private equity, venture capital and M&A) & their Valuations in India.
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