India’s funding winter is thawing a bit, says Rajiv Anand, Deputy MD, Axis Bank.

Funding winter in India has been seeing some signs of recovery in the last 6 to 12 months with Family Offices and domestic venture capital firms actively investing and bringing liquidity to the markets, said Rajiv Anand, Deputy Managing Director, Axis Bank.

Addressing a media round table, he said, in the U.S, venture capital and private equity players were not able to make exits because of various reasons and therefore the industry was chocked, and this resulted in a reduction in the fund flow to India.

‘’But India, in the last over 6 to 12 months has shown ability to generate exits for PE and VC investors. We are seeing large deals happening and a slew of new economy companies are getting listed. Markets have also matured and their acceptance of new economy companies have increased significantly,’‘ he observed.

Mr. Anand further said, the funding winter to some extend has thawed in the country because of the ability of the markets to provide liquidity. ‘‘Family Offices in India have become big investors in start-ups. Also, domestic venture capital firms are mobilising savings from HNIs and Family Offices. All these are bringing liquidity to the market,’‘ he added.

Sanjiv Bhatia, President & Head of New Economy Group, Financial Sponsors and Multinationals Coverage, a new business created by Axis Bank for startups four year ago, commented that ‘‘Startups have also pivoted new business models and therefore they are not burning much cash these days.’‘

According to Mr. Anand, under New Economy business, Axis Bank services over 700 startup across diverse domains and the bank’s current lending is ₹2000 crore to these firms while it has a deposit of ₹25,000 crore from startup community.

Mr. Bhatia said the bank was focussed on new age businesses and New Economy Group catered to a wide range of startup requirements including working capital loans, transaction banking, employee banking and forex.

‘’Today, we have over a 40% market share of Series A and above funded startups and 67% of unicorns in the country bank with us,’‘ he added.