"Hello World" has been a standard since the beginning of software development. Hello World" is also the title of the first blog post of our new blog, on our completely new website. Oh yes: We also have a new logo. It was developed by Kris Lüdemann, a young designer from Hamburg, who also realized the website redesign. 

AECAL was launched at the end of 2013 and since then we have invested in a total of 11 Indian start-ups. We have invited German and European co-investors to invest with us in a number of these investments. 

The interim results, after almost 5 years, are quite positive. We were able to realize two significant exits, in each of which we received back more than four times of the invested capital after less than three years. In the case of two other companies, we and our co-investors succeeded in exiting by way of an so called acqui-hire, and we were able to recover the invested capital.  Only one company could not be continued and had to be liquidated. The only total writer off so far. Among the remaining companies in the portfolio are still a few pearls from which we expect a good return in the future. 

At the same time, we consulted four German companies to understand the Indian digital ecosystem, conducted two extensive market entry studies and helped one company to take its first practical steps out of the Delhi metropolitan region. 

Within the scope of these activities, we have established and deepened countless contacts with a connection to India in Germany, but above all, of course, in India itself. We have seen hundreds of start-ups talking to dozens of investors, developed some deep friendships and travelled the country about 25 times (yes we needed a new passport book, because of all those full page visa documents in it...)

We have seen how quickly India is developing, as well as the sentiment of international investors towards the country. At the beginning, scepticism prevailed, then there were 18 months during which international investors could not bring their money into the country fast enough, followed by an unavoidable lamentation and the rapid recovery to the current situation. 

We experienced the largest transaction in the Indian digital ecosystem to date when the American company WallMart invested $16 billion in Flipkart - the accolade for Indian startups, as it made it clear that the airy valuations of Indian e-commerce companies may well survive. At the same time, however, for many it is also disappointing, as everyone is still waiting for an Indian unicorn to go public.

AECAL itself has also changed in the five years: Founded by two partners, one partner left the company after 2.5 years and I took sole responsibility for the company. 

Now there is a new logo, a completely renewed website and a blog, through which we want to communicate interesting things about the Indian ecosystem in the future: "Hello World".