INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
With two months of 2019 still to go, Indian tech startups are already having their best year as a record amount of capital flows into the
local ecosystem in a major rebound since the darkened funding environment of 2016.The unlisted tech startups in India have raised $11.3
significantly in the ecosystem
In 2017, Indian startups raised $10.4 billion, according to Tracxn.Startups with consumer-facing offerings including financial services have
Following that is retail startups that have bagged about $2.3 billion and those that offer enterprise services, with $1.5 billion
startups shows that the local ecosystem is maturing, said Dev Khare, a partner at VC fund Lightspeed Venture Partners
In an interview with TechCrunch, Khare noted that in 2014 and 2015, startups were largely focused on building e-commerce solutions and
He attributes much of this change to the arrival of telecom operator Reliance Jio and some government efforts, such as introduction of GST
man, Mukesh Ambani, has disrupted the market with incredibly low-cost mobile data
The low-cost data meant that overnight, tens of millions of Indians were able to come online for the first time.This, alongside a cash
crunch created by New Delhi in late 2016, led to a sudden explosion in demand for contentand services, including mobile wallets that created
a massive opportunity for local startups to innovate, Khare said.Financial services firm Paytm, which has raised more than $2 billion to
date, has more than 200 million registered users in India, while Google Pay has amassed over 67 million active customers in less than two
years of its existence.Additionally, Khare said more people than ever in India today are willing to work at a startup
worked at a startup before
That figure went up to 36% in 2014 and ballooned to 70% last year.There are some other promising signals as well: Of the top 150 Indian
startups that raised capital in the first half of this year, 17.3% of them were either led or co-led by women, Indian news outlet The
Morning Context reported on Wednesday, citing data from research firm Venture Intelligence
This is a massive jump from last year, when just 10% of startups counted women as their founder or co-founder.A trend that appears to
continue from the last several years is concentration of funds in a smaller number of startups
So far, tech startups in India have participated in 872 financing rounds, compared to 924 last year, and 1,141 in 2017.But that number, as
well as total fundraise amount, could change substantially by the end of the year as many more startups prep to close new financing rounds
Zomato, Swiggy and Paytm alone are expected to close rounds worth as much as $3 billion in the coming months.
