NEW DELHI, Jan 3: Consolidation and customer experience are expected to be the buzzwords for startups this year as entrepreneurs focus on bringing in innovation across sectors like education, healthcare and financial inclusion.
Consolidation is a natural progression, but one can expect more big scale consolidation in 2016, according to industry players.
Shopclues founder Sandeep Aggarwal said e-commerce and food technology will see noticeable consolidation.
“Consolidation activities will be the next big trend in the landscape and will help the startup ecosystem to strengthen itself, building strong foundation for growth and leveraging strengths of each other,” added Rajat Tandon Vice President of NASSCOM 10,000 startups.
Tandon said startups with a strong and intensive planning and execution strategy will survive and lead to bring in structured growth.
The year 2015 saw two big bang M&A deals with Snapdeal acquiring online recharge platform FreeCharge (estimated to be about USD 400 million) and Ola buying TaxiForSure in a USD 200-million deal.
Rajnish Wahi, Snapdeal’s SVP Corporate Affairs and Communications said both multi-million dollar and smaller investments would continue as companies look to efficiently use funds to create value for their investors.
Padmaja Ruparel, President of Indian Angel Network said there will be a lot more seed or early stage investing happening this year though growth stage monies could get a little harder to raise and this could impede companies.
However, there are challenges ahead for the industry as well, be it concerns around correction in valuations or bubble around e-commerce bursting.
Prateek Srivastava CEO of Basil Advisors said investors want to invest in businesses that will drive the next level of innovation in consumer life behaviour.
Some of the existing business are focussing on reworking their growth model to make themselves break even at operation- level, he said.
“Monetisation will also undergo innovation as companies using discounting and offers (while burning cash) were able to bring consumers to adopt to the product, the products which have been able to drive change for a consumer will get monetised and will help them grow towards an evolved financial independence,” Srivastava added.
While 2015 saw intrinsic use of new technologies like digital payments, Internet of Things (IoT) and smart data storage, this is poised to pick up pace as other technologies in renewable energy, advanced robotics and autonomous vehicles catches the fancy of clean-tech, ed-tech and fin-tech companies. (PTI)
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