The Indus Valley Report 2024 - 3rd edition is here!! 🎉

This report is our take on India and the Indian startup ecosystem, through different lenses to sensemake what we call as “Indus Valley” - a catch-all moniker for the Indian startup ecosystem.

Sajith Pai Nachammai Savithiri R Blume Ventures

Here are 15 lenses or frames for you all to munch on

The report is 132 slides, broadly divided into two sections, India and Indus Valley, and about thirteen different subsections, each covering a different part of India's story. Read Indus Valley Annual Report

1. The duality or paradox of India

The story of India has always been how two opposite things can be true at the same time. You could be the 5th largest economy in the world and at the same time be 140th in terms of GDP per capita.

We see this duality in a lot of different places throughout the India story

2. Understanding India's income tax collection

Income tax is another interesting way of looking at it. Out of a 1.4 billion population, only about 0.3% contribute to 80% of the income tax collected.

In the report, we also explain how this contributes to high government borrowing as it spends to compensate for low corporate borrowing and investments into fixed capital (GFCF).

3. Blume's take on the Indian consumer segment

India 1, 2 and 3 - the 3 countries that exist in India, seem to be one mental model to understand India, where India 1 is mostly driving the economy and is the main consuming class 

4. The Rule of 30

why do we at Blume believe the outer limit of the Indian consuming class is ~30m households, about 10% of the total number of Indian households?

5. Story of Indian Equity Markets

A key part of India’s story this year has also been how well Indian markets have performed even with a global slowdown. One very big reason has been the rise of the mutual fund industry on the back of SIPs. We unpack the Indian equity market story.

6. The rise of personal loans

The rise of personal loans has been one of the key themes of the Indian economy and how small ticket loans have grown 31x in the last 5 years. We try to unpack what is happening in personal loans and why RBI is worried.

7. India's Export

India’s story is incomplete if we don't talk about its IT sector and how it has been powering the Indian economy, it also relates to how in many ways India exports its people, services and culture to the entire world.

8. Digital Public Infrastructure

A key development and observation over the last 15 years is India’s emergence as a digital welfare state, leveraging digital public infrastructure (DPI) to reach every person in the country and also how DPI has been a key driver for Indian startups.

9. Now to Indus Valley

Now, it’s no surprise that funding has gone down over the last couple of years.

Here is how it stacks up.

10. State of late-stage funding

When we drill down, we find it is late-stage funding that has led to the decline, where both investors and founders are playing a wait-and-watch game

11. How does VC and PE funding in India contrast with China

One big learning while making this report has been how different China vs Indian private markets have been, how Indian PE markets punch above their weight in comparison to China and how it is a function of delivered exits and public investor’s appetite.

12. SME IPOs consistent outperformance

One interesting angle on the SME IPOs is that they have continuously outperformed the main board over the last few years.

13. Rise of Digital Native Brands

A key theme in the Indian startup ecosystem of late has been the rise of Digital Native Brands, which have been growing steadily over the last few years and beginning to create their playbooks of international as well as domestic expansion

14. Fintech's rapid rise and growing impact

Fintech has leveraged UPI to grow rapidly, right from having a majority market share in retail broking to leading access to credit for underserved customers in India

15. Indus Valley consumer tech model

Indian startups are also creating a distinct monetisation playbook, by enabling microtransactions, or subscriptions built on top of UPI Autopay, when very few believed that Indian customers would pay or that the only way to monetise was via ads.

This is only a small glimpse of the whole report. You can access the Indus Valley Annual Report 2024 at http://bit.ly/indusvalleyreport2024   

If you enjoyed reading it, then please do share it forward if you liked it, and of course, feel free to post and tweet about it.

Thanks from team IVAR Sajith Pai Nachammai Savithiri R Anurag Pagaria and we have a small surprise coming your way very soon. So stay tuned!