“2021 has been a year of the Indian consumer. Several D2C brands and e-commerce marketplaces saw sales volume that was beyond what they had intentionally planned. These volumes were the catalyst that caused a positive domino effect across the industry. Initially, the startups in logistics (especially) warehousing and last-mile delivery services, which is a crucial cog of the D2C enabler ecosystem, saw massive spikes in demand. Next to reap the rewards were the payment gateway startups and payment wallet companies that were needed for completing transactions. Next were revenue-based financing companies that saw an opportunity to solve working capital issues for fast-growing D2C brands. Now we see the demand for dark stores. All these spaces are growing rapidly (and in tandem) thanks to our Indian consumers. Hence in my book, the true MVP for 2021 is the Indian consumer! 

2021 has set up a strong platform for this 2030-decade, which I believe will be the decade of Indian startups – unless we ignorantly mess it up. Significant funding has been pumped into the startup ecosystem at a rapid pace. The visible appetite for tech-IPOs has created a vibrant and secondary market for early-stage investors, which resulted in a positive and enormous rotation of money plowed back into the early-stage ecosystem.  

This pattern may very well continue in 2022. We might see a few tiny blips, where-in the market may overheat, investors may get cautious and will closely re-evaluate the tangible results vs the promised from their portfolio companies. However, the Fintech juggernaut should continue to penetrate the tier 2/3 markets bringing household debt to GDP to 25-30% by 2030 vs 11% today i.e., a conservative $1.50 trillion dollar opportunity for a $5 trillion economy!