Swiggy and Byju’s buyers have marked down the worth of their holdings within the companies by 25% and 48%, respectively, persevering with the pattern of valuation markdowns of unicorn startups.

Sinking ships?
TechCrunch studies that BlackRock has slashed Byju’s valuation, India’s most dear startup, to half — from $22 billion to $11.5 billion.
Invesco has lower the valuation of Swiggy, India’s most dear meals supply startup — from $10.7 billion to about $8 billion.
Different startups, together with OYO, Snapdeal, Shopclues, Quikr, Hike and Paytm Mall, have additionally fallen sufferer to valuation cuts within the face of the weakening international economic system.
OYO
Final September Softbank, the biggest shareholder in OYO, lower its estimated worth for the agency to $2.7 billion within the June quarter.
The determine earlier stood at $3.4 billion.
The revision was made after benchmarking it in opposition to friends with comparable operations.
That is fairly the flip of fortunes- OYO’s valuation had reached $10 billion in a 2019 funding spherical.
Buyers themselves no exception
When SoftBank reported mediocre June quarter outcomes final yr, it marked down honest valuations of greater than 280 of its portfolio companies, which largely included personal startups.
Again then Monetary Categorical had reported that this is able to set a regarding precedent for Indian fund managers and enterprise capitalists.
What’s happening?
The markdowns come at a time when the present international financial local weather has gone south attributable to shaky markets and a funding freeze within the startup ecosystem.
India’s startups aren’t any exception, with many having to cut back operations, lower prices, and conduct mass layoffs to remain afloat.
Funding
Edtech big Byju’s not too long ago raised $1 billion in funding from buyers, together with BlackRock.
Swiggy, in the meantime, has diversified its enterprise into grocery supply, and had additionally secured giant funding value $700 million led by funding agency Invesco in January 2022.
Firing after securing funding
Each companies laid off employees this yr, with Swiggy not too long ago firing round 8-10% of its 6,000-strong workforce.
Equally Byju’s laid off 900 workers in February, making it the third spherical of firing within the final yr.
Affect
It’s too early to say what it will in the end end in, nonetheless, each corporations have been anticipated to go public quickly.
This can probably be pushed again in view of ongoing market situations.
A protracted funding winter mixed with a crash in progress and late-stage offers, could turn into a double whammy for unicorns which can have to surrender their title as they lose their billion-dollar standing.
Unicorns no extra
Non-public market tracker Enterprise Intelligence studies that round seven Indian startups have misplaced their unicorn standing within the final 5 years.
From CY18 to CY22 (so far), round 105 startups had attained the unicorn standing which has now come right down to 84 lively unicorns.
This may be attributable to a number of components, together with seven shedding valuations attributable to investor markdowns and one other 4 getting acquired.
Then round 10 startups have been listed within the public markets within the final 5 years and so have been excluded from Enterprise Intelligence’s unicorn tracker listing.