The valuation of Meesho, the Indian e-commerce rival of retail giant Amazon, more than doubled last year to $5 billion, after marquee investors such as SoftBank and Fidelity pumped in hundreds of millions of dollars.
They aimed to ride a boom in India's tech startups, which raised a record $35 billion in new funds in 2021, but the tide has since turned, as corporate governance concerns loom large for investors facing a new uncertainty in global markets.
"We haven't seen a slowdown like this in at least five to six years. It is going to be brutal," said Anand Lunia of venture capital firm India Quotient, an investor in more than 70 startups since 2012.