1947 Tech 🇮🇳: 161

It’s raining IPOs & more!

1. Dispatch from Bangalore

A startup founder, who hasn’t had much sleep all week, woke up on a recent Sunday to a phone call from his co-founder. A senior engineer was feeling burnt out and was contemplating leaving. For the founder, who had several calls scheduled with many high-profile Silicon Valley investors later in the day, talking this developer out of leaving the job quickly became the top agenda item for the rest of the weekend.

There’s a joke among many startup founders in Bangalore that hiring two to three engineers is currently more time-consuming and cumbersome than securing a fresh round of funding. Heavily-backed startups are paying big premiums to attract and retain talent, making it very challenging for their younger siblings to scale. And relying on recruiters is costly and still takes over a month to close a hire.

Indian startups have raised a record $10.46 billion in the first half of 2021, up from $4 billion during the same period last year, and $5.4 billion in the first half of 2019, data insight platform Tracxn told me. (In all of 2020, Indian startups had raised $11.6 billion.)

Dispatch from Bangalore

2. Flipkart raises $3.6 billion at $37.6 billion valuation

Flipkart raised $3.6 billion as part of a new funding round led by parent Walmart Inc. and returning investor SoftBank Group Corp., valuing the IPO-bound online retailer at $37.6 billion.

Several marquee investors, including Singapore’s GIC Pte, China’s Tencent Holdings Ltd, Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (CPP Investments), Abu Dhabi’s DisruptAD, Qatar Investment Authority, Malaysia’s Khazanah Nasional Bhd, Willoughby Capital, Antara Capital, Franklin Templeton, and Tiger Global also participated in the round, Flipkart said on Monday.

Flipkart raises $3.6 billion at $37.6 billion valuation

Podcast 🎙

Raghav Chandra is the Co-Founder & CTO of Urban Company. Urban Company is the largest home services platform in India and UAE, with recent expansion to Australia and Singapore.

You can click here to listen in

Shiva Singh Sangwan @shivassangwan

Raghav Chandra (@ra9z) wanted to swing big, he knew he can't grow in his comfort zone and he felt passionate about changing the world. So here we are 7 years later. The byproduct of his move, courage, and passion? Urban Company (@urbancompany_UC)

anchor.fm3: Raghav Chandra (Urban Company) by 1947 Rise • A podcast on AnchorRaghav Chandra is the Co-Founder & CTO of Urban Company. Urban Company is the largest home services platform in India and UAE, with recent expansion to Australia and Singapore. SHOW NOTES The journey from growing up in India to moving to the US and then moving back to India (1:00) His thought pro…

Worth paying your attention

1. Two Indian Unicorns Plan Mega IPOs Link

2. Indian financial services firm MobiKwik looks to raise $255 million in IPO Link

3. Temasek, Warburg Pincus and Bhavish Aggarwal invest $500 million in Ola Link

4. Exclusive: Tiger Global leads $100 Mn Series D round in Spinny Link

5. Investors led by Tiger bet $144 million on DealShare Link

6. PayPal Ventures, Bertelsmann lead $41.3 million funding in Shiprocket Link

7. Zomato IPO to be first on Paytm Money’s new pre-booking of IPO feature Link

8. SoftBank in talks to invest in online pharmacy chain Pharmeasy Link

9. India’s SaaS space can create $1 trillion in value by 2030 Link

10. Trell raises $45 million from Mirae Asset, H&M Group, others Link

Thank you for reading. Please share any feedback, questions or comments with me on Twitter :)