India’s 30 highest funded tech startups of 2014

2014 was a record year for Indian startups when it comes to venture capital funding.

Flipkart had a billion dollar funding round, which was matched twice over the very next day by rival Amazon, who handed over a two-billion-dollar check to its Indian arm. Japan’s Softbank then came in to bolster Snapdeal with two-thirds of a billion dollars.

Apart from ecommerce, it was the taxi apps Ola and TaxiForSure that were on a funding high in India to counter global player Uber, although they all ended the year on a regulatory low.

But there were other high-flyers like real estate portals Housing.com and CommonFloor, classifieds portal Quikr, food guide Zomato, and messaging app Hike. Data tech plays like Druva, Vizury, and AdNear too were hot this year.

Here’s a look at the 30 highest funded Indian tech startups in 2014.

1. Flipkart – US$1.91 billion

Ecommerce leader Flipkart became the first VC-backed company in India to have a billion dollar funding round. Tiger Global and South African media group Naspers led the US$1 billion funding in July, which followed a US$210 million round just two months earlier. And it rounded off the year with another US$700 million from new investors. Part of the funds went into acquiring leading fashion portal Myntra. Three months before the merger, Myntra had raised US$50 million. Tiger Global and Accel were the leading investors in both Flipkart and Myntra, and are believed to have pushed for the merger to shore up the battlefront against Amazon.

Flipkart says it aspires to be the Alibaba of India, in an obvious swipe at its main competitor Amazon from Seattle, USA, where Flipkart’s founders Sachin Bansal and Binny Bansal once worked as techies.

See: With $1B funding, Flipkart fires salvo at Amazon: We’re going to be the Alibaba of India

2. Snapdeal – US$861 million

Snapdeal, headquartered in Delhi, is the main local rival to the Bangalore-based Flipkart. The eBay-backed startup raised US$234 million in two back-to-back funding rounds in February and May, but still looked under-funded after Flipkart’s billion-dollar funding round in July. Months of speculation followed on how Snapdeal would cope. Then Japanese telecom giant Softbank came to India in October with bagfuls of cash. And Snapdeal, whose co-founder Kunal Bahl was forced to leave the US after studies because he could not get a work visa, got US$627 million more in funding to play in the big leagues.

See: Why did Indian ecommerce major Snapdeal acquire smart gifting platform Wishpicker?

3. Ola – US$251.5 million