Early-stage investor Antler, which kicked off its India operations in 2020, plans to invest in 20 startups the country over the next six months and write more and bigger cheques as it sees a recovery in the startup ecosystem after a lull over the past year or so.
“We will invest in more companies .. because we are seeing the number of founders this year has started increasing,” Rajiv Srivatsa, Partner, Antler India told businessline. “People are coming with more audacious ideas, more maturity. We’re also seeing very good quality founders again coming back or better quality founders starting out with better quality ideas for sure,” he added.
The firm is committing larger checks now. Earlier it used to commit $250,000 but now it is writing larger checks of $500,000 on day one, Srivatsa said.
Singapore-based Antler is recognised globally as the world’s most active early stage investor, present in around 30 cities across six continents and has backed over 1000 companies so far since it started in 2018. Its investment start on, what it calls, Day Zero.
In India it has invested in 65 start-ups so far including companies such as intercity mobility platform ApniBus, investment platform IndiaP2P, carbon management platform Sangti.
Lack of founders
Talking about the funding winter that gripped the startup universe in late 2022 and has been on for 18-20 months, Srivatsa pointed out expensive valuations of the more mature startups resulted in big funds pushing back and this had a spillover effect on Series A and B funding too.
He added that the quantum of funding was not the issue but “just that the number of people becoming founders has drastically reduced.” The data showed that the number of people launching startups had gone down. Part of the reason was the uncertain market conditions and less people wanting to take the risk of leaving their jobs to become founders.
This year had however shown signs of revival in entrepreneurship and Srivatsa said he expected the number of startups this year to surpass last year. There was no shortage of capital at the pre-seed stage and investors willing to write checks.
Almost all sectors were seeing good action in the startup ecosystem with healthcare and fintech probably getting more attention. Compared to the US, where the startup ecosystem has almost reached the stage of a public market, in India the startup sector is still nascent, and it has to be treated as such. Srivatsa said that 2021-22 had been an aberration with its high valuations that had seen many startups floundering when they hit the public markets.
“But that’s part of the ecosystem’s learning,” he added.