SoftBank Corp founder and chief government Masayoshi Son met prime Indian startup founders and CEOs on his day-long go to to New Delhi on Tuesday, together with Paytm founder Vijay Shekhar Sharma, Flipkart group CEO Kalyan Krishnamurthy and Lenskart cofounder Peyush Bansal.ET was the first to report about his one-day visit to New Delhi on March 3. This is Son’s first journey to India in additional than 4 years.
Sharma tweeted an image of Son with founders and CEOs, which included Supam Maheshwari, cofounder of FirstCry; Sandeep Deshmukh, cofounder of ElasticRun; Cars24 cofounder Vikram Chopra; Bhavin Turakhia, cofounder of Zeta; and Asish Mohapatra and Ruchi Kalra, founders of OfBusiness and Oxyzo, respectively.

“Ultimate joy today, seeing Masa smiling, happy, and enjoying his India trip. Every one of us had tons of gratitude for his belief and support given to our startups,” Sharma tweeted.

Son additionally attended the marriage reception of Oyo founder Ritesh Agarwal on Tuesday, individuals within the know mentioned. He had lunch with Agarwal and his mother and father earlier within the day.

According to individuals current on the assembly, Son advised the gathering that when he began investing in India 6-7 years in the past it was primarily based on intuition. That has now reworked right into a core perception and no investor can flip away from India as a market, Son is believed to have mentioned.

The India journey is important because it comes on the again of SoftBank dealing with deep losses from its ambitious $100 billion Vision Fund, which has been battered by a rout in tech valuations globally amid rising rates of interest, geopolitical issues and the waning of a pandemic-led bump up in digital transformation spends.

SoftBank is one of the largest foreign investors in the Indian tech and startup sector, with $15 billion deployed right here over the previous decade.

During the assembly on Tuesday afternoon, Son, in accordance with individuals current within the assembly, advised the gathering that every disaster was a possibility to reinvent and are available again stronger, indicating that the present funding winter shouldn’t be a deterrent for startups.

Because of Covid-19 restrictions earlier, among the founders had been assembly Son for the primary time. One startup founder advised Son that he was a ‘Covid-baby’ for SoftBank because the funding occurred through the peak of the Covid-19 pandemic in India.

In his chat, Son indicated that he had realised solely about 1% of his imaginative and prescient for SoftBank and that he was reinventing himself as an entrepreneur.

Some of Son’s early huge bets in India embody Ola, Oyo, Paytm, Snapdeal, and Flipkart, whereas Lenskart, FirstCry, Meesho, Unacademy, OfBusiness, and Delhivery are amongst its newer investments.

Amid the broader correction in valuations of new-age know-how corporations, SoftBank has drastically scaled back investments to offset losses and has been offloading stakes across listed firms like Delhivery, Paytm and Policybazaar. Last week, it offered a 3.85% stake (28 million shares) in Gurugram-based Delhivery via bulk offers for Rs 954 crore.