Green Shoots For Early-Stage Startups In Hyderabad

Hyderabad: Global venture capital investment in 2021 doubled over its previous year. However, this rapid growth decreased in 2022, led by contraction in both deal volumes and values globally. Startup ecosystem market intelligence platform, CB Insights[1] reports that in India, funding and deals decreased consecutively across quarters in 2022. However, despite the retrenchment in funding, in India the early-stage deal shareheld steady at 74% in 2022, same as in 2021.

India has the third largest startup ecosystem in the world, with over 91,000[2] government recognized startups, many of which are located in tier two and three cities. With over 4,500[3] tech startups, Hyderabad is emerging as one of the major hubs forstartups and founders to begin their entrepreneurial journey.Born in the cloud, startups in Hyderabad are innovating and building solutions to address the unmet needs of people across the world.

An example of this is OneMoney, India's First Account Aggregator, licensed by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI),that offers a secure data sharing solution to financial institutions. Founder & CEO of OneMoney, Krishna Prasadsays he chose to build the fintech startup in Hyderabad because the city offers strong infrastructure support, with a cosmopolitan atmosphere, growth opportunities, top talent accessibility, availability of funds from leading investors and help through government-led initiatives.

Built on Amazon Web Services since Day 1,OneMoney was launched into production in 2021, “OneMoney offers consumers more control over their financial data, through our consent management platform. We work with India’s leading financial institutions, including the public and private sector banks, and enable them to safely share and receive consumers' data.AWS is designed to provide a stable, reliable and secure technology infrastructure that enables us to serve millions of customers in India. By using the capabilities and managed services provided by AWS, we have scaled to over two million customers in two years, and gained a ~45% market share. AWS also helped us to optimize our technical infrastructure to significantly reduce cloud spend by as much as 25%.”

“AWS contributed to our early stage success through the AWS Activate program, which provided access to AWS credits, cloud services and trainings, and also, by facilitating networking opportunities that helped increase our business and customer base,” added Krishna Prasad.

The fintech uses more than 20 AWS technologies, ranging from basic compute and storage to database and architecture options.With more than 200 fully featured services, AWS offers the broadest and deepest set of capabilities of any cloud provider.

On 22nd  November, 2022, AWS announced the launch of India’s second AWS Asia Pacific (Hyderabad) Region, which provides customers with more options to run workloads with even greater resilience and availability, securely store data in India, and serve end users with even lower latency.  The new AWS Asia Pacific (Hyderabad) Region is estimated to support an average of more than 48,000 full-time jobs annually through a planned investment of more than $4.4 billion (approx. INR 36,300 crores) in India by 2030. The construction and operation of the AWS Asia Pacific (Hyderabad) Region is also estimated to add approximately $7.6 billion (approx. INR 63,600 crores) to India’s gross domestic product by 2030.

“The AWS Asia Pacific (Hyderabad) Region will provide us, and other fintech startups, with greater disaster recovery and resiliency support,” added Krishna Prasad.

Amitabh Nagpal, Head of Startup Ecosystem, Amazon Web Services India Private Limited (AWS India) says AWS is deeply committed to supporting the local startup ecosystem to grow despite the challenging economic environment, “AWS enables startups to tap into the cost-effectiveness and flexibility of the cloud to experiment at a greater pace despite lean resources, fail fast with low financial impact, adapt, and recover easily. This creates a low risk environment that spurs curiosity, innovation, and growth.There has never been a better time to build a startup in Hyderabad. Born in the cloud, OneMoney exemplifies how startups can use a broad range of programs, tools, and applications provided by AWS to achieve scale and at the same time, optimize cloud costs.”

AWS supports local early-stage startups and founders by providing them access to a network of over 60 ecosystem enablers in Hyderabad, including incubators, accelerators, venture capital firms, angel investors, and others.

Endiya Partners, a leading venture capital firm based in Hyderabad, India, invests in promising technology startups across Software as a service (SaaS), healthcare, fintech, and deep-tech sectors. Sateesh Andra, Managing Director atEndiya Partners says, “We focus on helping startups reach their full potential, and have seen many of our portfolio companies, such as Darwinbox, Kissht, Zluri, Qapita, Scrut Automation, and others, benefit from their collaboration with AWS. At Endiya, we recognize the pivotal role that cloud technology plays in the success of startups. AWS provides comprehensive support to startups through its AWS Activate program, customer success initiatives, cloud infrastructure, and ecosystem support. We look forward to our continued collaboration with AWS to support the growth of the startup ecosystem in Hyderabad and beyond.”

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[1]https://www.cbinsights.com/research/report/venture-trends-2022/

[2]https://www.startupindia.gov.in/

[3]https://tracxn.com/explore/Startups-in-Hyderabad

Also Read: Challenges Faced by Indian Startups to run online business