MegaDelta's Bala C Deshpande started a mid-market growth fund along with her cofounders in 2018. Here, she puts the spooky mega spikes in valuations in the past years in perspective, and how the behaviour of capital has changed over time--takeaways for what entrepreneurs now need to succeed
If you are talking to Bala Deshpande, expect nothing less than an incisive and a brutally candid conversation. “I’ll be very honest,” says the seasoned investor who began her investment career with ICICI Ventures in 2001, and has held close to 40 board positions in companies across industries over the last two decades. “There are moments when I too did not really understand why this is happening, or why it should happen,” she says, alluding to a spike in the valuation of startups that spooked many within and outside the startup ecosystem last year. A glut of capital, reckons Deshpande, was the culprit. “Capital will flow to places where the return lies,” underlines the investor, who joined the American venture fund NEA in 2008, and co-founded MegaDelta along with Tarun Sharma and Ruchir Lahoty in 2018.
(This story appears in the 18 November, 2022 issue of Forbes India. To visit our Archives, click here.)