October 21, 2022

A Winter of Growth for early-stage Start-ups

It is a winter of joy for start-up founders, as many VC’s have shifted their focus to early-stage start-up’s. This is a result of the global economic slowdown. The Indian venture capital investments is down by around 80% in Q3 of 2022 and is back to levels comparable to 2020. As a result, there is a growth slump in the number of new unicorns for the last 2 quarters and has also put a pause on many start-up IPOs that were planned in 2022. This has led to VCs shifting their focus from large funding deals i.e. $ 25 million and above, to entering into early-stage deals with an investment size of $ 2 million to $ 10 million. While the world adjusts to the economic slowdown leading to a funding freeze among large start-up, VCs have shown immense interest towards consumer-oriented start-ups in India with their key focus on Tier 2 and Tier 3 markets, where they still expect reasonable growth opportunities.

HA, though sector agnostic, continues to focus on the following start-up sectors – Consumer Tech, Health Tech, Space Tech, Mobility & Logistics, Deep Tech, Enterprise SAAS and Fintech, with companies having strong sales growth focused founders.

In Aug 2022, HA elected its new Chairman, Mr. Rajesh Manthena and Vice chairman, Mr. Pradeep Dhobale. We aim to continue contributing to the ever-growing Indian start-up ecosystem. We at HA hope all our members, start-up founders, associations and partners had a Happy Diwali.

Chairman's Note

HA completed its 10th anniversary this year and we celebrated this milestone by felicitating more than 45 of our members who have been the pillar of constant support for most of HA’s journey and have been a big part of our growth story. This last decade has been exceptional for us at HA, as we invested in more than 60 start-ups from which we have 11+ successful exits and 17+ successfully raising venture investments.

In the last 2 years itself HA has funded more than 21 start-ups. We have also partnered and worked lot more closely with our ecosystem partners in fostering entrepreneurs not only in Hyderabad but also globally.

Some of our most recent, note-worthy partnerships include collaboration with T-Hub, Telangana Govt. and O-Hub, Odisha. As we move-on to our next decade of exponential growth, we aim to becoming a pillar to the India’s growth story by fostering entrepreneurship through the start-up ecosystem.

Vice-Chairman's Note

This winter brings an array of new funding opportunities for the investors as well as start-up founders alike. While the global economic crisis has seen large investor or VC’s either playing it safe or withdrawing investments, it has proved to be a boon for the angel investment ecosystem and growth promising start-ups.

“It’s through curiosity and looking at opportunities in new ways that we’ve always mapped our path” – Michael Dell

In order to stay ahead of the curve in our next decade, we have strengthened our internal evaluation processes and systems to onboard growth focused start-ups, while also strengthening our internal evaluation committees which address our investments, portfolios, and partnerships. We are on to the path of building a more cohesive internal community of investors within the HA ecosystem, which will further help accelerate our growth and strengthen our governance.

We look forward to serving the start-up ecosystem and members to the best of our ability and bring growth to all the players.

Let’s celebrate this winter in its true sense by spreading joy and supporting the endeavours of others.

We look forward to serving the start-up ecosystem and members to the best of our ability and bring growth to all the players.

Let’s celebrate this winter in its true sense by spreading joy and supporting the endeavours of others.

HA’s Recent Investments:

Getepay
Founded in 2016 and based out of Jaipur, Getepay is a Merchant Service Platform that enables the merchants to manage different aspects of their businesses and to collect payments from their customers. Getepay provides an integrated payment platform with multiple payment modes to merchants in various categories.

Supercluster Pi
Founded in 2021, Supercluster Pi is on a mission to build customer-centric, problem-solving & socially conscious brands. The company aims to build the Unilever of tomorrow in the health, wellness, and beauty space. The company wants to empower 1000+ product entrepreneurs by acquiring and scaling their brand to make it a household name In India and globally.

TurboHire
Founded in 2019 and based out of Hyderabad, TurboHire is an end-to-end recruitment automation platform that is easy to use and provides configurable solutions enabling recruiters to streamline their hiring process. TurboHire helps enterprises cut 75% of the time to hire and improves the quality of hires by 3x, thus helping the CEO’s ensure predictability of revenue growth or company roadmap through team building.

Sid Farms
Founded in 2016 and based out of Hyderabad, SIDS FARM is a premium dairy brand born out of a promise from a dad to his son to produce the best possible milk and milk products. The company’s farm and milk processing facility are right next to each other in Shabad, Ranga Reddy District, Hyderabad which is 55 km’s from Gachibowli/Financial District. The company currently has 70 cows and buffaloes on its farm. It also works with 2200 other farmers.

My3dMeta
Founded in Bengaluru in late 2019, My3dMeta enables the creation of 3D avatars, characters & accessories that are interoperable and needed at scale in 1/10th of the time & cost with enhanced quality.

Bellplus
Started in January 2021, Bellplus Media is an ad-tech firm in the digital out-of-home advertising space. The company places their digital displays in high footfall areas like elevators, lobbies of residential and commercial buildings.

Prescinto
Founded in 2016 and based out of Ahmedabad, Prescinto is an AI and cloud-based platform offering solar plant monitoring solutions. The platform offers advanced data analytics, contract & warranty management solutions, data acquisition & visualization solutions, asset configuration solutions, plant underperformance insights, and more.

Freed
Founded in July 2020 and based out of Gurgaon, FREED is India’s first comprehensive Debt Relief company. The company works with debt-burdened customers to resolve their unsecured debts through a structured debt relief program and help them become debt-free.