Lockdown fails to dampen Indian Startups: Investors continue to invest as funding requests see a surge during Covid-19

India’s entrepreneurs and investor community kept engaging with each other during the Covid-19 lockdown period. “The number of (startup) applications have certainly increased, and they have increased across the board,” said Anil Joshi, Founder and Managing Partner of Mumbai based Unicorn India Ventures.

New Delhi: A nationwide lockdown has failed to dampen the spirit of India’s entrepreneurs and investor community as both kept engaging with each other during the Covid-19 lockdown period and investors continued to write cheques for the entrepreneurs having sound business ideas.

On March 24, Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced a complete nationwide lockdown to slow down the community spread of highly contagious novel coronavirus (SarsCoV-2) that has killed over 6,600 people in the country while the global death toll reached near the figure of 4,00,000 in just less than six months of the global pandemic.

It prompted the governments across several countries to shut down businesses and industry and suspend air and rail travel and road transportations which brought the economic activity to a grinding halt and as a result the world economy is expected to suffer a loss of $9 trillion this year.

However, India’s startup sector, which has been pegged as the third largest in the world after the US and China, continued its forward march even during one of the most difficult times for the humanity in recent memory.

“The number of (startup) applications have certainly increased, and they have increased across the board,” said Anil Joshi, Founder and Managing Partner of Mumbai based Unicorn India Ventures.

“On an average I get 8-10 applications every day and these entrepreneurs are seeking investment in the range of Rs 1 crores to 15 crores,” Anil Joshi told ETV Bharat.

“We at Unicorn have decided to make investment in 4-5 applications that we received during the Covid-19 period,” he said.

Social impact investor Aavishkaar Group also funded two startups just ahead of the Covid-19 lockdown, and one of them received funding after the lockdown came into effect on March 25 this year.

“We did two transactions, one just before Covid-19 in a fintech platform called Chqbook and the other one was in a grain bank called Ergos and both are digital transformation businesses, and they are doing well even during the lockdown,” said Sushma Kaushik, Managing Partner of Aavishkaar Bharat Fund.

While an investment of $5 million was made in March this year, the investment of Rs 35 crores in an agritech platform called Ergos was announced in April this year when the country was under the Covid-19 Lockdown 1.0.

Sushma Kaushik says investors like Aavishkaar Group continue to receive a large number of applications even during the Covid-19 lockdown and engage with entrepreneurs.

“We used to get 50-60 applications per week during the pre-Covid period and I don't think that Covid-19 has stopped that in any way,” she told ETV Bharat in a webinar organized by Mumbai based electronic payments firm EPS India.

“I don't think Covid-19 lockdown or lack of physical meetings has impacted us in any way in evaluating the proposals and the investment opportunities are huge and startups are doing great,” Sushma Kaushik told ETV Bharat.

(Article by Krishnanand Tripathi)