Rakesh Wadhwa:

Given the current situation where capital is scarce and everybody is trying to conserve it, what do you think about startups in the absence of capital? How will they invest over the next couple of years? And does that mean end of creativity and ideation/innovation? Because all of that needs capital to flourish.

Rama Bijapurkar:

Taking the last part first, I sometimes believe necessity is the mother of, innovation. A colleague, again, a very well known person, actually more than a colleague, a guru has written a book on grassroots innovation and he shows you how people have gone ahead and on the way to do things.

And I've often wondered why the big companies don't innovate, you know, why the small companies innovate. Uh, in every single space, but the startups, again, I've also been listening to a lot of startup, VCs, and obviously the focus now is on capital protection. So there is going to be some Darwinism, those who have already established a proof of survival and so on and so forth, we'll get the capital.

Those who are still in the fund stage may not get the capital. In which case they will die. Habitual entrepreneurs, they will come back. And with the times, I am also told, looking at this and talking to a lot of people in the space that, the days when you were awarded for adventurism is over. I think now you've rewarded for reality.

So even if you look at the letter, the Airbnb CEO wrote, and it was quite interesting, he said, we're going back to the core of who we are, which is human connections. So maybe that's what OYO should be thinking about as well.

So yeah, it is a rough ride, but I have a feeling that, venture capital and startups are going to be safe. Banks not lending to anybody. I would really worry about solvency of, a lot of financial institutions if the banks don't lend to them, and if the customers don't pay back.