Unicorns staring at fund woes, drop in valuation amid Covid-19 outbreak

Curbs on investment by Chinese investors a major roadblock

Amid the Covid pandemic, India’s start-up unicorns such as Oyo, Zomato, Ola and Swiggy are likely to face delay or find it challenging to raise follow-up funding from global investors, especially the Chinese ones, owing to the government’s restriction.
 

China’s firms such as Tencent, ByteDance and Alibaba, apart from several other global ones, including SoftBank, Visa, Naspers and various sovereign funds, are quite active in the Indian start-up space, having invested billions of dollars.
 

Venture capital and private equity firms, the primary drivers of investments into start-ups, rely on foreign sources for their capital. The Indian government’s recent changes in