As we stand at the cusp of 2017, it’s time to gather one’s thoughts regarding the year that passed us by. For startups in India, 2016 proved to be the year for consolidation and transition, where entrepreneurial mindset metamorphosed from a gold rush-like mentality into an ecosystem where preference is being given to quality over quantity.

Even though the velocity of capital flowing in has slowed down, the quality of work being completed with was a tad higher. The spectrum of innovation by startups expanded across many verticals of the Indian economy. During the year, Indian startups experienced numerous moments that made this ecosystem vibrant and tested its inhabitants for survival; this resulted in a year that was rather a memorable one.

Start-up and Stand-up-India

This scheme was launched amidst a lot of fanfare on 16 January 2016. It was implemented through 125,000 bank branches and after initial hiccups, the government of India decided to revamp it to woo more entrepreneurs and startups. As part of this scheme the government announced a $50 billion credit guarantee fund, and banks were instructed to provide loans at the least applicable rate of interest. Finance Minister Arun Jaitley further noted, “Every bank branch, including private sector, will give loans between $1 million and $10 million to at least one SC/ST (Schedule Caste/Schedule Tribe) and one woman entrepreneur under the scheme.”

Emergence of a new set of investors

Apart from the established names of Softbank and Tiger Global management, the ecosystem witnessed an emergence of a slew of investors such as Stripes Group (Bookmyshow), Thrive Capital (Practo), Sands Capital (Bigbasket), Fosun Group, Xiaomi’s founder Lei Jun (Shunwei Capital Partners), Cheetah Mobile, Baidu and Tencent (Hike instant messenger). Snapdeal raised $200 million in fresh funds from investors led by Canada’s Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan, which is Canada’s largest single-profession pension plan with $154.5 billion in net assets. Along with this, Malaysian sovereign wealth fund Khazanah Nasional Berhad invested close to $100 million in Fractal Analytics, which is an India and U.S. based data analytics provider. Also Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan’s investment arm The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI) made its first investment in Asia and as part of this deal Byju’s in-education sector raised $50 million from the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, Times Internet Ltd, Sequoia Capital, Sofina and Lightspeed Ventures.

Nikesh Arora resigned from his role as president of SoftBank

Arora was set to become the next CEO of SoftBank when its Chief Executive Masayoshi Son was contemplating resignation. However, later Son changed his mind about the succession plan and decided to retain the post as SoftBank’s CEO for the next five to 10 years. Japanese SoftBank is one of the biggest investors in the Indian startup ecosystem these days and Arora’s departure came at a time when SoftBank had decided to prune its holdings. Despite Son’s insistence that SoftBank is a long-term shareholder, the company recently sold a large chunk of its shares in Alibaba and its entire stake in Supercell, a Finnish gaming company.

New wave of FDI reforms

The Government of India took a significant step towards making India the most open economy in the world. Through these reforms it allowed 100% Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) in food retail, civil aviation and 74% in private security agency and pharmaceutical businesses. This step came at a time when the Indian startup network was witnessing one of the hottest summer seasons of the past few years. The inhabitants of this third-largest ecosystem in the world had been in search of new resources of liquidity to ensure their survival. The step was imperative as the funding scenario was turning out to be a drought, which had potential to last for some time to come.

Downgrades of established names

Morgan Stanley, MF investors T Rowe Price, Fidelity and Valic marked down their holdings in Flipkart and U.S. based investment firm Vanguard readjusted the value of its shares in the e-tailer from $102.6 per share in March this year to $68.72 per share in September. Also Japanese investor SoftBank marked down and wrote off around $550 million in two of its largest Indian startup investments, India’s largest cab aggregator Ola and Jasper Infotech, which runs e-commerce marketplace Snapdeal. Around half of the value of this markdown was due to appreciation of the yen against other currencies.

Source: Forbes