Founders’ take: Building and scaling through funding crunch

  • Caesar Sengupta, CEO & Co-Founder, Arta Finance
  • Lim Wai Mun, Founder & CEO, Doctor Anywhere
  • Kevin Aluwi, Venture Partner, SEA, LightSpeed
  • In conversation with Aastha Maheshwari, Senior Reporter (Indonesia), DealStreetAsia

Amid the prolonged funding winter and liquidity crunch, startups across Asia have resorted to drastic steps including cost-cutting, layoffs, diversification of revenue streams, business pivots, scaling down non-viable operations to meet investor expectations and chase profitability metrics. This panel features leaders from two top startups Carro and Doctor Anywhere to know how they navigated the downcycle. Auto marketplace Carro earned unicorn status in 2021 after raising its $360-million Series C funding led by SoftBank Vision Fund 2 while SE Asian health platform Doctor Anywhere last raised its Series C1 extension in Dec 2023 amid a funding downturn.