Indian startups bagged $14.5b in funding in 2019, report finds

Indian tech startups have raised a total of US$14.5 billion this year, surpassing the previous record of US$10.6 billion in 2018, TechCrunch reported, citing data from research firm Tracxn.

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“The decade has seen an impressive 25x growth from a tiny US$550 million in 2010 to US$14.5 billion in 2019 in terms of the total funding raised by the startups,” Tracxn said.

In 2019, Indian tech startups participated in 1,185 financing rounds from 817 investors, according to the report.

The number of deals with sizes US$25 million to US$100 million went up to 81 this year from 56 last year. Funding rounds above US$100 million also increased to 27 from 17 in 2018.

Tracxn also said that 128 startups were acquired, four were publicly listed, and nine became unicorns this year. An Inc42 report counts companies such as cloud data protection firm Druva, ride-hailing company Ola’s electric vehicle arm Ola Electric, and enterprise SaaS company Icertis as among the Indian companies that joined the unicorn club in 2019.

India also attracted international investors this year. With over 50 investments, Sequoia Capital was the most active venture capital fund for Indian tech startups, according to Tracxn. It was followed by Accel, Tiger Global Management, Blume Ventures, and Chiratae Ventures.

Steadview Capital was the most active private equity fund with nine startup investments. General Atlantic, FMO, Sabre Partners India, and CDC Group were also among the active PE funds for Indian tech startups in 2019.

Western tech corporates like Facebook also made its first investment in an Indian startup, social commerce firm Meesho. Twitter led a US$100 million funding round in Indian social network app ShareChat. And Goldman Sachs made eight investments.

Accelerators for Indian tech startups also saw a busy year. Venture Catalysts was the top accelerator with 40 investments. Y Combinator, Sequoia Capital’s Surge, Axilor Ventures, and Techstars were also among the most active ones this year.