Decoding tech start-up boom; scope in Web3
NEW DELHI: India has the unique opportunity to become the global leader in Web3, but it needs to get its regulatory and legal frameworks in place, said Rajan Anandan, managing director, Sequoia Capital.
The concept of Web3 is a decentralised version of the Internet that runs on open source code such as a public blockchain, the underlying technology for cryptocurrencies.
Upasana Taku, co-founder and COO of digital payments company Mobikwik, said that this year and the years to come will create a new story for tech start-ups in India, and a positive one. “There will be a flurry for startups coming to the market,” she said at the Hindustan Times Leadership Summit.
Anandan said he was delighted by the government’s stance to not ban cryptos and come up with a legal and regulatory framework instead. However, he said, crypto is just one small part of Web3. “Web3 is very, very important, whether it’s NFTS (non-fungible tokens), gaming, or Defi (distributed finance). The kind of innovation that we’re seeing in Defi is extraordinary,” he added.
In the second half of 2021, Sequoia Capital India made 19 investments in Web3 startups, said Anandan. He pointed out that many entrepreneurs from India, China, Korea, Japan, the US, UK and Australia are moving to Singapore because it has a regulatory and legal framework for Web3.
Anandan said the start-up ecosystem in India is no longer only about e-commerce, fintech, mobility, Saas (software as a service) or development tools. “Over the next five years, we are going to see a dozen unicorns in agri-tech, (and) we are probably going to see at least a dozen unicorns in digital health. We are going to see two or three dozen unicorns in ed-tech. In fintech, we’re going to have 100 unicorns.”
Taku said: “The start-up journey is dozens of people telling you to turn back. But... you keep going forward. Building Mobikwik is like that for me – against all odds, Bipin and I decided to go ahead with a digital wallet in 2009. Imagine, the whole would have thought we are crazy because India was a completely cash driven economy at that time.”
Anandan expressed surprise at the number of initial public offerings by tech start-ups in India. However, he cautioned that going public is just one of the milestones in the journey to building an enduring company. “To be a truly enduring company, the real question is what’s going to happen in the next five years.”