Young Turks Special: Experts discuss big startup ideas for 2020

2019 was a better year for startups when compared to 2018. They got about USD 14.4 billion in investments compared to USD 10.3 billion in the previous year.

Startups that received top funding this year were OYO at USD 1.67 billion, Paytm raised USD 1 billion, Udaan raised USD 585 million and Delhivery raised USD 528 million.

The sectors that saw a lot of action were consumer tech, followed by fin-tech, retail, enterprise applications, health tech, artificial intelligence, and food.

Shereen Bhan caught up with Sudhir Sethi of Chiratae Ventures, Shanti Mohan of Lets Venture and Sanjay Nath of Blume Ventures to discuss the year gone by and spot the big ideas for 2020.

Talking about the year gone by Shanti Mohan said, “2019 has been one of the best years for Lets Venture, more from the perspective of the trends we saw on the platform. So we doubled our deals with the platform, we doubled the amount of money which was raised on the platform as well as the total value of the companies. Our portfolio companies which raised funding on Lets Venture since 2013 crossed the billion-dollar mark. So we are at USD 1.07 billion today in term of portfolio value.”

Sudhir Sethi said, “There are more serial entrepreneurs coming in now. I think that it is very good for the system because people are cycling now. The second is that the quality of the product or the service which is coming in is solving very real challenges in the market space. Third, many of the brands have created dominant positions. Lastly, we are seeing deep technology companies taking steps outside the country.”

Sanjay Nath of Blume Ventures said, “2018 and 2019 were the years of building and what we are seeing is that engine has been built and what we are really seeing is that now that scale is happening. We are also seeing people talk a lot about cross-border but we are seeing some interesting talent flow in the cross border space.”

Speaking about the year 2020 Sanjay Nath said, “We are going to see B2B, deep tech for the world but that starts at home in India and then sort of expand its footprints. We are also going to look at the broadening of B2B to include deep tech.”

Sudhir Sethi said, “I would say 2020 would be preparation year but subsequent to that we will see a number of more IPOs. Watch out for secondary sales space - that is very big right now.”