VC Funding vs Acquisition - Which Model Works Better for D2C Brands

EXPERT SPEAKS

- PURU GUPTA

At some point in time, the term "start-up" was used for a smallish hustling business that intended to accelerate to scalable growth. In the past few years, "Startups" and "Funding" are almost synonymous, and hardly used separately in conversations. With televised shows promoting the quantum of funding as the eventual outcome, funding is now almost universally assumed to be the eventual culmination of the start-up, and therefore, success. Whether it is healthy or not for the Indian start-up ecosystem is debatable, as the school of thought varies with where you are sitting - in a co-working office looking at desperate pitches or in a relative's unused warehouse, printing labels to be pasted on the couriers.