India, May 19 -- The warning signs were on the horizon in December last year; profit-booking, a global sell-off pressure and the subsequent stock market crash proved to be a precursor to the bloodbath to come. And while private startups might have felt safe given the damage to public companies in late 2021, those feelings have given way to fear, panic and rationalisation.

Cycles of booms and busts are not uncommon in the world of business - it is the ripple effects of the peaks that cause troughs and those that survive the trough rise up to build the next peak. In that sense, the business world mimics the survival of the fittest school of thought.

But unlike nature, where evolution more or less builds fortitude in the surviving species,...