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Samreen Ahmad · · 6 min readPlotting out SoftBank’s 2023 India roadmap
When it rains, you put up an umbrella.
This is Japan-based SoftBank’s modus operandi as an economic slowdown continues to batter the tech industry globally.
The world’s biggest tech investor has been on the defensive, cutting back on startup investments by 50% to 75% as its Vision Fund was hit by sizable losses.
The flagship VC fund posted a loss of US$9.8 billion during the September quarter even as the company bounced back to profit after three quarters at a group level.
SoftBank’s share price soared during the 2020/2021 boom and peaked at around March 2021. Since then, however, it has fallen by about 40%.
Given all this, it’s no surprise that it has massively rolled back investment in India, one of the most important markets for Vision Fund.
SoftBank is one of the country’s biggest unicorn minters, investing in a slew of billion-dollar companies such as Flipkart, Oyo, Lenskart, Unacademy, and Swiggy.
According to Tracxn data shared with Tech in Asia, SoftBank invested US$9.3 billion in the country in 2021, but this plunged to US$1.1 billion in 2022.
But an industry source that Tech in Asia spoke to refuted the data above, adding that SoftBank invested US$3.2 billion in 2021 and US$510 million in 2022 in India. This too translates to a steep investment cutdown of 84% year on year.
Tech in Asia sought comment from SoftBank India, but our email went unanswered.
Roadmap for 2023
Contrary to Tracxn’s data on the number of deals, the industry source said SoftBank invested in 14 deals in 2021 in India, which went down to six deals in 2022. The trend of fewer deals is likely to continue this year.
“The platform will be very opportunistic on deciding on investments as a huge valuation reset is anticipated sometime in the second quarter of this calendar year,” the person notes.
Early, but not early stage
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The world’s biggest tech investor is likely to sit tight and wait for valuation corrections in the second half of the year.
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