How many of you were glued to the live stream of today's Chandrayaan-3 landing? More on this historic feat below.

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In today’s newsletter:

• India conquers Moon's South Pole with Chandrayaan-3
• Investors take a hard look at edtech after Byju's crisis
• Bharat startups brave funding winter 

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"17 minutes of terror" is how ISRO officials termed Chandrayaan-3's planned descent manoeuvre from the Moon's orbit to its surface.

Describing the entire process that began around 5:40 pm today as merely stressful would be an understatement. 

(A space influencer had his heartbeat mapped as Chandrayaan progressed towards landing. At one point, it reached 120 beats per minute.) 

But how it bore fruit!

Also Read | Team effort: Companies behind the Chandrayaan-3 mission

At 6:03 pm, India became the first country in the world to successfully land a spacecraft, Chandrayaan 3, on the Moon's South Pole.

• Overall, the country is the fourth to land on the lunar surface

• This event marks the culmination of Chandrayaan-3’s month-long journey that began in July from Sriharikota

Also Read: Meet the architects of India's moon mission

After the landing, a joyous ISRO chairman S Somanath took the podium to address Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who was following the landing virtually from South Africa.

“Sir, we have achieved a soft landing on the Moon. India is on the Moon,” he told Modi jubilantly.

Also Read | Chandrayaan-3 mission: Indian space tech startups hail ISRO for historic feat

Modi dedicated the successful landing to “all of humanity”, and said that this “will help Moon missions by other countries in the future”.

Also Read | Chandrayaan-3: Success could mean commercialisation of landing tech

 Going ahead, Chandrayaan-3's lander, Vikram, will deploy the rover, Pragyan. Both are retrofitted with payloads capable of carrying out experiments on the Moon's surface.

• Vikram and Pragyan will collaborate in searching for minerals that can provide valuable insights into the evolutionary history of the Moon

Building upon the achievements of Chandrayaan-1, the mission holds the promise of further discoveries, particularly in relation to water molecules found on the lunar South Pole.

“When a market leader is in blues, entire sector gets painted in the same shade,” Ashwin Damera, co-founder and CEO of edtech unicorn Eruditus, told us a few weeks ago.

He was referring to the impact of the crisis at Byju's on India's edtech sector. Damera’s statement piqued our curiosity, prompting us to inquire further and consult various industry experts. 

As it turns out, many concurred with Damera’s perspective.

The ongoing crisis at Byju's has induced apprehension among investors regarding the state of India's edtech industry. 

In the first eight months of 2023, investments in the edtech sector have dropped by more than 80%. This is worse than the overall decline in startup investments, which has fallen by about 60%.

In fact, the investment numbers in 2023 are worse than those in 2019, a pre-Covid year.

• However, investors have favored a niche segment: higher education and upskilling

India's edtech opportunity is massive. However, execution is what matters. For years, Byju's sold this "massive opportunity" to investors, but it was not able to execute it in the best way, according to a late-stage investor.

• This lack of execution has led global investors to question the size of India's edtech market

General Atlantic, a global private equity investor in India's top two edtech companies, Byju's and Unacademy, has already distanced itself from the sector.

Byju's has also taught a lesson to founders and venture capitalists about raising debt, according to Apoorva Ranjan Sharma, a veteran investor who has invested in a few edtech firms.

As Byju's tries to revive itself from the crisis, it remains to be seen if the tide will turn for other edtech companies.

Go deeper

Small-town Indian startups are weathering the funding winter better than their big-city counterparts.

Startups in tier-1 cities have seen a much sharper drop in funding than those in tier-2 and 3 geographies, according to data sourced from PrivateCircle.

• In the first half of 2022, funding for tier-1 startups fell by 83% from the peak of the 2021-2022 boom, while funding for tier-2 and 3 startups fell by 66%

• The number of deals also fell more sharply for tier 1 startups, with a 70% drop, compared to a 66% drop for tier 2 and 3 startups

The comparison with the second half of 2021 — which marked the best six-month period for Indian startups overall in the last five years, during which these firms attracted almost Rs 87,000 crore across 1,178 deals — is quite striking.

• After the pandemic-driven hype for digital platforms wore off, startup funding in H1 2023 shrank to Rs 14,911 crore across 358 deals

The funding boom of 2021 saw young companies in tier 2 and tier 3 cities receive their first big influx of capital. However, they did not typically receive the same outsized valuations as their counterparts in tier 1 cities.

• This has turned out to be a blessing in disguise, as many growth-stage and late-stage companies in metros are struggling to maintain their valuations

The funding winter has leveled the playing field. The average deal size for startups in tier 2 and tier 3 cities is now Rs 42 crore, which is almost comparable to the Rs 43 crore level for tier 1 city startups.

Go deeper

India is currently grappling with a challenging funding period, marked by a year without the emergence of new unicorns and a scarcity of late-stage deals. Concerns about overestimating the market's potential are looming large.

• However, Mukul Arora of Elevation Capital maintains that this is actually the best time to go "All-In on India."

Backed by substantial data, Arora outlines the themes he believes will define the current decade for India's tech startups.

Read the full opinion piece

• Investors will be looking to see if Nvidia's strong demand for AI products can offset the global decline in computer hardware sales when the company reports quarterly results.
  
  
• OpenAI now allows businesses to fine-tune GPT-3.5 Turbo with their own data to create custom models that can match or exceed the abilities of GPT-4 for certain tasks.

• A closer look at Google and YouTube's complex relationship with artificial intelligence and copyright as the company scrapes the web to train its AI models while also exploring paying for AI generated content.

The world is still celebrating the historic landing of India's Chandrayaan-3 mission on the Moon's South Pole. 

This is a major achievement for India's space programme, and it is a testament to the hard work and dedication of the scientists and engineers at the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO).

If you are interested in learning more about the history of ISRO, we highly recommend the podcast "Mission ISRO with Harsha Bhogle". This well-researched podcast tells us the story of how (and why) a fledgling nation, which was even struggling to feed its people, managed to kickstart a space mission.

Check it out on Spotify

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