Softbank is now eyeing the smaller transactions range as its part of revamping India strategy. Softbank provides the largest exposure for fintech in the world. Recently it has shown interest in India, and was in news because of its strategy to merge two arch rivals Flipkart and Snapdeal.
When Policybazaar decided to raise some additional capital it was none other than Softbank who wanted to invest here. Policybazaar received a lot of investors but they were set on having just one Big investor.
The CEO, and co-founder wanted Softbank to be its investor even though the valuation Softbank offered was much lower. Dahiya said – “We did not want SoftBank on the side of a competitor. We were very clear that we wanted to have SoftBank as our investor. We were not interested in anyone else. Soft Bank has the widest exposure across fintech in the world.”
Both the tech enabled start-ups, Policy Bazaar and Paisa Bazaar raised 238 million from Soft Bank. And after that both the startups entered the club of the titans of the tech enabled start ups. SoftBank has created Flipkart to be a successful start up. It created a company from scratch who can compete with its competitors dollar-on –dollar.
Rehan Yar Khan, the managing partner at Orios Venture Partners, an early stage management firm said- “SoftBank has created what can be called as a mega fund Phenomenon. The good thing about it is that it has brought a lot of capital to start-ups and done a good job of backing new economy firms. But for companies that do not get funded by it there is no other mega fund to go.”
The Oyo Hotels and room received the full support of the mega fund and has turned into a full stack management from a budget hotel aggregator. It is going global now. Oyo has become South Asia’s largest and China’s second largest and fastest growing chain of hotels. This says that Softbank’s capital brings advantage to a startup. And after focusing on PolicyBazaar, Softbank is looking to change its India strategy. It will now focus on lesser investments.
