Which is the hottest startup hub in India this year?

Delhites and Bangaloreans have a running battle on which is the most happening tech city in India today. Well, it appears that Delhi has caught up with Bangalore this year, at least in startup funding activity.

Delhi and its satellite tech hub of Gurgaon, which come under the National Capital Region (NCR), had 186 funding deals in the first half of 2016 – exactly the same number as India’s Silicon Valley Bangalore, according to startup data cruncher Xeler8.

Q2 2016 startup funding in India. Image source: Xeler8.

Delhi and Bangalore were neck and neck in number of deals last year too. What’s changed in 2016 is that Delhi and Bangalore are also on par in the volume of funding. Both crossed US$1 billion in funding in H1 2016.

Pune is the fastest-rising hub

Delhi-NCR had US$1.08 billion in funding from January to June, while Bangalore tipped the scales only slightly with US$1.13 billion.

Mumbai remains in third position with 108 deals, followed by Hyderabad. But Mumbai’s neighboring city of Pune seems to be the fast-rising hub, displacing SaaS capital Chennai for fifth position.

Other fast-rising hubs this year identified by the Xeler8 data are Ahmedabad, Jaipur, Chandigarh, and Kolkata.

The data shows no slowdown in funding in the first half of 2016, at least in comparison to the same period last year. On the contrary, there has been a significant rise in early stage deals as well as a sectoral shift, with healthtech, edtech, fintech, and SaaS being the new darlings.

See: Reports of winter in India are greatly exaggerated: 2016 sees more deals, higher funding