Last year saw 13 startups, including eight tech companies, go public, raising billions and solidifying India’s global presence. Swiggy’s $1.3 billion IPO stood out as the largest tech public offering worldwide in 2024.
Looking ahead, major debuts from companies like Zetwerk, Meesho, Urban Company, Zepto, Groww, and Pine Labs are expected to capture attention.
Quick commerce continues to disrupt the food and grocery delivery market. Swiggy’s Snacc, Blinkit’s Bistro, and Zepto Cafe are leading the charge with innovations that promise meals delivered in under 10 minutes, expanding rapidly across cities.
On the funding front, 2024 saw over $11 billion raised in venture capital, with more than $9 billion in dry powder ready for deployment. Investors—domestic, family offices, and global players—are eager to support India’s disruptive startups.
However, challenges loom. High interest rates, geopolitical tensions, and trade tariffs could introduce turbulence, urging founders and investors to adopt more cautious growth approaches.
Despite these hurdles, 2025 presents abundant opportunities, particularly in artificial intelligence (AI). AI is on the verge of widespread adoption, giving startups the tools to innovate in sectors like healthcare, education, and fintech. This push for accessible, transformative technologies is poised to drive scalable impact.
To explore the future of India’s startup ecosystem, CNBC-TV18 spoke with Ritesh Banglani, Partner at Stellaris Venture Partners; Dinesh Pai, Head of Investment at Rainmatter; and Vaibhav Domkundwar, CEO of Better Capital.
Below are the edited excerpts of the discussion:
Q: As you look ahead, what are you most excited about? What gives you the most confidence as we enter 2025?
Banglani: We are at an inflection point of multiple technologies as we enter 2025. You mentioned about AI getting democratised but we are seeing similar inflections in certain other technology areas like electric vehicles (EV) and the AI ecosystem going beyond just the foundational models that happened in 2021, 2022 and 2023.
We see the applications of artificial intelligence becoming more mainstream this year and that would lead to a lot more startup opportunities.
Q: Let’s talk about that $300 million fund that you’ve closed at Stellaris. What do you do with that? How do you intend to deploy it?
Banglani: Our strategy is pretty simple, we plan to continue to invest in seed and Series A rounds in early-stage startups. We are sector agnostic, so we will continue to invest across a wide range of technology sectors and we are starting to see quite a bit of deal flow continue in SaaS, consumer technologies, and increasingly we are seeing more AI deal flow as well. So, these will be the key sectors for us to invest in.
Q: It’s been an exciting decade for Rainmatter, but what does the future hold?
Pai: It’s been an exciting 10 years. Over the past couple of years, I think we’ve deployed about ₹500 crore odd. So, in the next few years, I think we’ve got a corpus of about ₹1,000 crores that we are yet to deploy, mostly into interesting challenges. I think, there’s no lack of capital in the country today for startups. There are more entrepreneurs. Being an entrepreneur is more mainstream, more acceptable. That is something of a credit to the entire ecosystem itself, the investors, the government, and all the founders who’ve kind of enabled this. So, for us, it’s all about backing some of those exciting challenges that are more long-term.
Rainmatter is all about giving back, in a sense, to the startup community. So, it could be fintech, health, climate. Some of those pressing challenges really need patient investors. And some of the domestic capital that we’re at least bringing to the table is probably adding some value there.
Q: What’s looking most exciting to you? And of the big trends through 2024, quick commerce, of course, being one of them, which were the others that took you by surprise by the sheer momentum that we saw?
Domkundwar: Going into 2025, I think the main area that we’re excited about is consumer tech. In consumer tech, we believe there are three sectors from commerce perspective, I think quick commerce definitely is showing a lot of pull and we will see that as a new platform for retail that will emerge.
Secondly, I think marketplaces are seeing greater adoption with consumers sort of adopting payments and the full stack of interaction. And the third thing that we’re seeing is finally digital content, when done right, is actually delivering incredible value to the level of monetisation that is creating tens of millions of dollars of ARR for companies. So overall, I think we are very excited about just consumer tech, which I think we have all been waiting for that to play out, because this is the largest consumer market in the world. So, I think we’re very excited about the signs that we saw in 2024. So, we’re going to double down in 2025 on these three areas.
And then from a B2B perspective, I think we have this concept we call outcome as a service, which we believe is going to redefine B2B and enterprise software entirely, where companies all over the world are going to buy outcomes, pricing is going to change, and there’s going to be a lot of disruption. So, as we go through a lot of pain, I think the opportunity is much larger. So, I think outcome as a service is a big bloc, which is about software investing for us when going into 2025.
Watch the video for entire discussion
