We Will Get There

It’s exact 7 years since I put down my papers as a VC at Matrix Partners in mid-2015. It took me a while to get out, and many predicted doom given the lack of our entrepreneurial experience. It didn’t turn out exactly that way. All of us started OfBusiness, built on what we thought we knew and were good at.

Then, in 2016, equity funding practically died. We faced a slew of rejections, hence. B2C was the toast of the town, and B2B, for all the right reasons, was frowned upon. Well, debt happened to us, and there was always that one investor who believed in us.

2016 wasn’t yet finished that demonetization happened. It was meant to be death for SMEs (the bulk of our customer base then), but they came out stronger than before. Digital adoption skyrocketed. And that propelled us too.

In 2017, GST happened. Yet again, experts predicted that SMEs would have no place to hide. In hindsight, it was one of the best things to have happened to all of us. GST opened doors that the previous archaic ones had shut ajar.

2018 and it was ILFS’ turn. Credit got squeezed out like never before. And with a business that had a large financing component with commerce to infra businesses, we should have been affected. We scraped through, though.

2019 and its DHFL. Governance and ALM came into focus, and credit got tightened further. It’s a time that tightened many business models as the feeble ones fell apart. We learnt and marched ahead.

Come 2020-21, the mother of crises, Covid, loomed. Lost demand and restricted movement scathed many businesses. Not us. We had our best years in business.

As the 2022 so-called recession looms (spurred by rising debt costs, absence of equity, the slowdown in demand and dropping material prices), we reminisce on our learnings of the last 7 years. The world is likely, always conspiring against us. But that will spur us to innovate, learn and fight. For if we are it, we will get there. Gloriously.

Read more from CEO speaks Column:-
– Objectivity Rules
– We shall Overcome…