Bengaluru-based Postman, a API management product, has raised a total of $433 million valuing it at ~$5.6B. Its revenue was $171M in 2023. As a comparison, Rubrik with ~ $850M ARR is valued at $6B or about 7 times its revenue. The same metric would put Postman’s valuation at $1.2B. I would argue further that Postman has much lower stickiness and will face higher churn and hence, the revenue multiple would be lower for Postman.

Sharechat, a startup that can be thought of as WhatsApp public groups. It has raised $1.3B that’s more than what Google ( $26M), Facebook ( $300M), WhatsApp ( $60M), and Twitter( $350M) raised in the private markets combined! The only social media company that raised more was Snap and given its stock performance since IPO, it isn’t a great company to compare with.

Then there is Oyo, the booking.com of India, whose founder has shown dubious character. It has raised $3.4B in private funding and is currently valued at $2.4 billion. In a weird style of self-dealing, its investor, Softbank lend money to Oyo’s founder to invest in a new round of Oyo! Oyo’s revenue is about $60M giving a revenue multiple of 40. Booking.com’s revenue multiple is 6. Even using the same revenue multiple for Oyo, would puts its valuation at $360M!

There are great companies in India like Zoho and Freshworks, however, the frothiness is insane.