Google should sell ad manager suite – US; Startup funding in India fell 38 pct in 2022; Indian SaaS projected at $35 bln in 2027

One Thing Today in Tech

The US Justice Department yesterday accused Google of abusing its dominance in digital advertising, and said the internet giant should be forced to sell its ad manager suite, Reuters reports. Venture capital funding of startups fell more than 38 percent in 2022 versus 2021, GlobalData finds. Indian software-as-a-service companies, however, were a relative bright spot, according to a separate report, by Bain & Company, a consultancy, which estimates the sector is maturing and will continue to grow. And Pune startup Ecozen has raised $25 million in equity funding and loans.

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The US Justice Department yesterday accused Google of abusing its dominance in digital advertising, and said the internet giant should be forced to sell its ad manager suite, Reuters reports.

That business generated about 12 percent of Google's revenues in 2021 but also plays a vital role in the search engine and cloud company's overall sales, according to Reuters.

"Google has used anticompetitive, exclusionary, and unlawful means to eliminate or severely diminish any threat to its dominance over digital advertising technologies," the antitrust complaint said. Google’s advertising business is responsible for about 80 percent of its revenue.

In the world of startups, as concerns about global economic slowdown took hold, venture capital investments in India fell 38.2 percent in 2022 versus 2021, according to GlobalData.

An analysis of GlobalData’s financial deals database reveals that a total of 1,726 VC funding deals worth $20.9 billion were announced in India in 2022. The number of deals in 2021 was about the same, at 1,715, but the amount of funding was much higher, at $33.8 billion.

Meanwhile, India’s Software as a Service (SaaS) ventures are a relatively bright spot, according to Bain & Company, a multinational consultancy. Indian SaaS companies are poised to command 8 percent of the global SaaS market, generating $35 billion in annual recurring revenue (ARR) by 2027, growing at 20–25 percent per annum, Bain concludes in a new report that was released yesterday.

“We are now seeing the emergence of a set of Indian SaaS companies who have a right to win not just in India, but globally, Arpan Sheth, a partner at Bain, and co-author of the report.

The outlook for Indian SaaS investment remains broadly positive over the next 12 months, with ~90 percent of Indian SaaS investors expecting to increase or maintain their capital allocation to SaaS.

Ecozen, a cold-chain tech startup, has raised $25 million in equity and debt funding, the Pune company said in a press release. The Series C equity portion was led by Nuveen and Dare Ventures, with participation from the Export-Import Bank of India, and existing investors Caspian and Hivos-Triodos Fonds.

Omnivore and IFA, early investors in Ecozen, took partial exits in this round. Ecozen was founded by three IIT Kharagpur alumni, Devendra Gupta, Prateek Singhal and Vivek Pandey. They sell solutions for motor controls, IoT, and energy storage focused on cold chains and irrigation for the agri sector.