Will SoftBank’s Vision Fund turn us blind?

SoftBank’s $100 billion Vision Fund bears grave portents for startups and investing in India, but there could be a much bigger problem lurking

At $93 billion, the Vision Fund is by far the largest VC fund ever in history

SoftBank’s recipe of $10 billion in 10 Indian startups is a recipe for, to put it mildly, a burning kitchen

A charitable way to describe this strategy would be to liken SoftBank’s portfolio to a “cyber-keiretsu”. Stay with us

The Vision Fund’s goal is to have a stake in all the companies which would create and dominate the Singularity

Leviathan.

If you could think of only one word to describe SoftBank’s Vision Fund, it would be this. At $93 billion, the Vision Fund is by far the largest VC fund ever in history. And like the legendary sea monster of yore, with its immense size and power, it is threatening to upend every aspect of startup investing all over the globe. But particularly so in India.

Masayoshi Son, the charismatic CEO and Founder of SoftBank, has earmarked a whopping $10 billion to invest in India. SoftBank has already invested $4 billion in companies like Flipkart and Paytm* and is said to be doubling down on Ola by buying out Tiger Global’s stake in the company, just as it did so in Flipkart earlier.

AUTHOR

Sumanth Raghavendra

Sumanth is a serial entrepreneur with more than eighteen years experience in running startups. He is currently the founder of Deck App Technologies, a Bangalore-based startup attempting to re-imagine productivity software for the Post-PC era. Sumanth’s columns appear regularly in leading publications. He holds MBA degrees from the Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore and Thunderbird, The American Graduate School of International Management, USA.

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