IndiaQuotient's Newsletter

Greetings!

As another year comes to an end, we wish you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year! 🎄✨

This “funding winter” season has arrived again to give us an interesting read called ‘Boundless’, written by two Wall Street Journal reporters. The book is a page-turner with the remarkable journey of celebrated executive Carlos Ghosn - a brain of innovation, encircling alleged crimes and a daring international escape. 

As his initial success gave rise to adulation and opportunities, entitlement crept in and lifestyle needs expanded. He took on too many things, like managing five international automobile behemoths at the same time, and somehow in his mind, the rewards did not follow. “Siphoning” was just about getting himself a “fair” deal.

Read the book here.

The Carlos Ghosn Saga is not unlike the ongoing FTX-Alameda fiasco. Or the one in our own national capital. Startups are no different from public market companies that way but such founders are clearly more naive and get caught pretty soon. 

The former “white knight” of crypto who was once worth $26.5 billion, is now reportedly down to his last $100,000. 

Read What happened at Alameda Research

Perhaps the FTX saga is more of a deja vu with Bernie Madoff, the main perpetrator of the largest Ponzi scheme in history.

One of the key learning’s from the Bernie Madoff scandal is to ensure that investors diligence great performance. If it looks too good to be true, it most certainly is. 

Read Bernard Madoff, Architect of Largest Ponzi Scheme in History, Is Dead at 82

Anand called this behaviour out in his piece this week in ET.

Read Anand’s Opinion on ETtech: Why journey should be the destination for founders, investors

With these grim stories behind us, here are a great developments to read about and mull over in the holiday season.  

Major tech behemoths and startups have been laying the groundwork for the emerging era of AI. 

AI startup OpenAI has captivated tech lovers with its new bot ChatGPT that astonishingly answers much better than Google or Alexa. 

Prior to this, the firm launched DALL-E, a powerful text-to-image generator that can give users desired image results with a few prompts. 

Read DALL·E 2, Explained: The Promise and Limitations of a Revolutionary AI

⏲️ What's next in AI? Only time can tell. 

Read Endless Media

Access ChatGPT here.

Indian startups are also now building up capabilities slowly in the AI domain. Sharechat is working hard to get at par with Google and Facebook. Here is what they explained earlier this year:

Recommended — Just For You: How We Handle Personalisation at Scale

The implementation of AI in SaaS is the next essential step to strengthen and solidify market dominance. 

Zoho has crossed $1 billion in annual worldwide revenue. It’s truly inspiring to see Sridhar Vembu building the new and transformative SaaS empire in India. 

We strongly feel that Indian Software will eat the world. We can witness the early signs with the likes of Exotel, Freshworks, Rocketlane leaving an indelible mark on the Global SaaS ecosystem.

Read Tryst with a Digital Destiny – India as the SaaS Operating System of the World

The reason why we feel Indian SaaS companies will thrive is because the best companies often tend to win over the most-funded companies, who continue to boast their distribution power. With SaaS, it boils down to the finest product and low cost structure to drive highest value. Increasingly, we are seeing that these values are founder better outside metros. We are elated to say Dhiwise, and Brands.Live are already leading the narrative!

Cheers to more shared success in the new year!