Meet the founders who braved the funding winter chill
The Forbes India cover story on outliers in a funding winter—and extends the Scrooge metaphor to the moneybags fuelling startup activity, the venture capitalists (VCs)
The cold within him froze his old features, nipped his pointed nose, shrivelled his cheek, stiffened his gait, made his eyes red, his thin lips blue; and spoke out shrewdly in his grating voice. A frosty rime was on his head, and on his eyebrows, and his wiry chin. He carried his own low temperature always about with him; he iced his office in the dogdays; and didn’t thaw it one degree at Christmas.
—Excerpt from A Christmas Carol, by Charles Dickens
Some 180 years after Dickens penned this novella, the protagonist’s name has become synonymous with the cold-hearted and tight-fisted. The man with the frosty rime and iced office in this allegory is Ebenezer Scrooge, an antithesis of the Christmas spirit and joie de vivre.
Let’s quickly cut to the chase and the topic at hand—the Forbes India cover story on outliers in a funding winter—and extend the Scrooge metaphor to the moneybags fuelling startup activity, the venture capitalists (VCs). Like Scrooge who, when younger, plunged headlong into the yuletide festivities, the good VCs were till not too long ago warm, blithe and generous. Until circumstances got the better of them—both Scrooge and the VCs—and they transformed into prudent pinchpennies.
A Christmas Carol does end on a happy note with the good cheer and spirit of Christmas re-entering Scrooge. And, to complete the Scroogian analogy, 2023 ended with the funders once again loosening the purse-strings—albeit, selectively.
(This story appears in the 12 January, 2024 issue of Forbes India. To visit our Archives, click here.)
