Kae Newsletter (Apr-Jun 2023)

Foreword (Tectonic Shift In Tech)

Compared to 2021 and early 2022, the speed and frequency of deals have definitely reduced. However, the desire to build still remains solid in the ecosystem.

What seems to have caught everyone’s attention recently is AI, which has picked up significantly in the first half of 2023. With OpenAI’s ChatGPT taking the ecosystem by storm, AI is poised to be the most disruptive technological shift since the introduction of cloud technology, especially Generative AI and its applications in everyday life. Tech giants are heavily investing in GenAI’s capabilities and testing the extent of its applications, be it in design, content, language modules, coding, etc.

There’s a lot to be excited about this year, and we hope to see some resilient companies come up during this time.

State Of The Startup Ecosystem In India

Funding in the quarter April-June 2023 saw major fluctuations. While April to May saw a jump of $400 mn in funding, to $1.2 bn, June saw a steep drop to $580 mn, less than half of its May figure. June 2023 was the worst month for Indian startup funding since August 2020. As per Inc42 data, early-stage startups raised $112.23 Mn across 52 deals in June 2023, a decline of 8.3% and a rise of 19%, respectively, from June 2022.

Portfolio Buzz In The Media:

Beyond the $$

Foxtale’s Founder and CEO Romita Mazumdar is creating a skincare brand that is specifically made for Indian women and the various climatic conditions they experience through rigorous research and making efficacy a priority. Since her inclusion in the Forbes India 30 Under 30 list, she has now also been included in the Forbes Asia 30 Under 30 list.

Zetwerk’s Co-founder and CEO, Amrit Acharya, was featured in the Economic Times 40 under 40 list, for his role in building India’s largest on-demand manufacturing network.

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Porter, a leading player in the intra-city trucking space, announced its expansion in the UAE market, with a $6 mn investment. It plans on increasing its customer acquisition by 2x and vehicle base by 3.2x by March 2024.

Traya Health has been making tremendous breakthroughs in helping its customers manage hair loss, thus impacting more than 2 lakh customers.

They recently won the Femina Power Brand award for 2022-23.

SuperAGI is a dev-first open-source autonomous AI agent framework, enabling developers to build, manage and run useful autonomous agents quickly and reliably. It has steadily gained traction, and was the #1 trending tool on GitHub this month, with more than 9.7k stars. It gained 7k+ GitHub stars in just two weeks. It has also featured in many developers’ top 10 AI tools on GitHub.

Snapmint, a leading company in the BNPL space, recently bagged 3 awards –? awarded by the Account Aggregator Framework (AA) ecosystem for innovation in lending, awarded at the World CX Summit for their CX achievements, and bestowed the title ‘The Best App initiative of the Year’ at the 2nd Annual NBFC & Fintech Excellence Awards, 2023.

Kae Updates

Blogs

1. Crafting a compelling pitch deck: The pitch deck helps in communicating a company’s story to external stakeholders and forms an important part of your first impression on investors. Sarthak Biswas has written an informative piece on crafting a compelling pitch.
2. Transforming SaaS with GenAI: GenAI has taken the world by storm and is here to stay. It is disrupting industries and the way we work, that too at an incredibly fast pace.? Veenu Choudhary has evaluated these changes, spoken with multiple founders in the space, and discussed all this in detail in our thesis.
3. Defining ICP: As a founder, one must identify and focus on the customers who will be most successful for them, i.e. the Ideal Customers. How does one begin this process? In this article, we have helped set a structure for identifying an ideal customer.

Stories

During a time when funding activities have slowed down, we advise our portfolio companies to concentrate on their core businesses and go for a bridge round, wherever necessary.

Gaurav Chaturvedi shares his thoughts with Entrepreneur India.

Webinars

1. The Kae team organised a webinar on “Crafting the right storyline” for its portfolio companies, discussing how to create context around your startup and updating it with the growth seen. With the use of real-life examples, our portfolio companies gained a lot of insight into the right approach they should take with their respective startups.?
2. Krishna Vinjamuri spoke at a webinar organised by VE3 on the transformative power of cloud migration and its impact on businesses of all sizes