masayoshi son india visit: SoftBank’s Masayoshi Son meets top startup founders, CEOs on India visit

On his day long visit to New Delhi on Tuesday, SoftBank Corp founder and chief executive officer Masayoshi Son met a set of top Indian startup founders and CEOs, including the likes of Paytm founder Vijay Shekhar Sharma, Flipkart group CEO Kalyan Krishnamurthy, Lenskart’s cofounder Peyush Bansal, among others.

ET first reported about his one-day visit to New Delhi on March 3. This is Son’s first visit to India in more than four years.

Sharma tweeted a picture of Son with founders and CEOs, which included Supam Maheshwari, cofounder of FirstCry, Sandeep Deshmukh, cofounder of ElasticRun, Cars24’s Vikram Chopra, Bhavin Turakhia, cofounder of Zeta, and Asish Mohapatra and Ruchi Kalra founders of OfBusiness and Oxyzo.

“Ultimate joy today, seeing Masa smiling, happy, and enjoying his India trip. Everyone of us had tons of gratitude for his belief and support given to our startups,” tweeted Sharma.

Son will also be attending the wedding of Oyo’s founder Ritesh Agarwal on Tuesday, as per people in the know. He had lunch with Agarwal and his parents earlier in the day.

The India trip by Son is significant as it comes on the back of SoftBank facing deep losses from its ambitious $100 billion Vision Fund, which has been battered by a rout in tech valuations globally amid rising interest rates, geopolitical concerns and the waning of a pandemic-led bump up in digital transformation spends.

SoftBank is one of the largest foreign investors in the Indian tech and startup sector, with $15 billion deployed here over the past decade.

Some of its early big bets include Ola, Oyo, Paytm, Snapdeal, and Flipkart, while Lenskart, Firstcry, Meesho, Unacademy, OfBusiness, and Delhivery, are among its newer investments.

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