Image credit: Tim Dechant / TechCrunch
The sudden collapse of Silicon Valley Bank, which served as the lifeblood of startups, is also affecting companies 8,000 miles away.
Dozens of young Indian startups backed by the likes of YC, Accel, Sequoia India, Lightspeed, SoftBank and Bessemer Venture Partners have banked with Silicon Valley Bank, sometimes as their only banking partner, and couldn’t withdraw the money on time, several people familiar with the matter said. the situation said.
VCs are wary of disclosing the names of the affected startups for fear that it would affect the young companies’ ability to raise capital in the future. Regulators stepped in Friday to shut down Silicon Valley Bank, the 16th largest in the U.S. and the bank for most startups.
Some Indian firms could not timely move their funds from Silicon Valley Bank because they did not have another US bank account readily available, many venture capitalists said.
Many Indian startups are incorporated in Delaware to make it easier for them to raise capital from US venture firms like Y Combinator. Some SaaS companies are registered in the US because even though they operate from India, they want to serve the international markets and want to be seen as a US company.
And for many firms that “flipped” their home base to the US from India, Silicon Valley Bank was the preferred choice, another person familiar with the matter said, pointing to the fact that many events in India were sponsored by SVB as the lender’s executives pushed to increase ties with Indian companies.
Almost all Indian SaaS startups with a large presence in the US banked with Silicon Valley Bank, said a partner at one of the top venture funds. Over a dozen Indian SaaS unicorns and many more “son unicorns” are headquartered in the US
Many of these young firms did not diversify their funds to several banks because in the early days it is usually not possible to increase the administrative and operational costs.
A US-based investor, who requested anonymity, said candidly that he knew many Indian firms had about $4-10 million parked in their SVB accounts. A group of Indian YC founders asked members about their exposure to SVB and found that more than 60 firms had over $250,000 parked in SVB, according to results seen by TechCrunch.
Indian SaaS startups and otherwise those backed by YC, which established their companies in the US and raised their first round there, often had SVB as their default bank, Ashish Dave, India head of Mirae Asset, tweeted. “Uncertainty kills them. Growth is relatively safer since they diversified.”
Garry Tan, the president of Y Combinator, said more than 1,000 YC-backed startups are affected by the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank. “30% of YC companies exposed through SVB cannot pay wages for the next 30 days,” he tweeted.
The story will be updated as we learn more.