Swiggy, one of India’s largest food delivery platforms, reportedly had its valuation cut in half by Invesco, one of its investors.

It’s the second time in a year that Swiggy’s valuation has been cut by the investor, TechCrunch reported, citing filings.

Swiggy was valued at $10.7 billion when it received its $700 million Series J funding round in January 2022, which Invesco led. In October of that year, Invesco marked Swiggy’s valuation in its portfolio down to $8.2 billion. It cut the value of its holding down further in January 2023, to $5.5 billion, TechCrunch reported. That marks an almost 49% decrease from Swiggy’s valuation during its last priced funding round.

Swiggy’s valuation trajectory mirrors that of another India-based food delivery platform: Zomato. When Zomato went public two years ago in July 2021, it boasted a $13 billion market cap. In May of the following year, its market cap had dipped to $5.3 billion.

Valuations are still shrinking

Swiggy’s valuation cut is another example of tech companies around the world returning to a new normal after the venture funding boom of 2021.

Companies that face investor write-downs are much more likely to be forced to take down rounds when the time comes to raise new money.

Swiggy won’t be the only one in this situation. Invenia, a cloud-based machine startup, late last year saw its internal valuation slashed 95% by investor Tribe Capital. Tiger Global marked down its portfolio investments by 33% in 2022. SoftBank Vision Fund, which was one of the more active investors in 2021, lost $7.2 billion in tech writedowns in 2022.

Elsewhere, valuations are taking a hit in a different way. Stripe’s valuation was as high as $95 billion back in March 2021. It was reportedly revalued at $74 billion in July 2022 following an internal valuation cut. The company lowered its valuation again to $63 billion in January. As of March, Stripe’s internal valuation is $50 billion — a stunning decline from its valuation during its 2021 funding round.

Buy now, pay later platform Klarna’s valuation plunged 85% from $45.6 billion to $6.7 billion in the span of one year as the company took in new funding during a significant down round.

Fast-fashion giant Shein reportedly cut its own valuation by more than 30% as it began looking at the IPO market. At one point, it was tied for the third most valuable private company in the world.

It’s been more than a year since the tech funding hype has died down, but plenty of startups are still grappling with the dramatic shift to their valuations.

Illustration: Li-Anne Dias