PC: Bankrate
Indian Startup Ecosystem Shows High on Energy—29 Startups Raise $177.68 Million From August 5th to August 10th, 2024. The amount collectively infused into 29 startups during this week was a whopping $177.68 million. The week summed up growth-stage deals, coupled with early-stage transactions, thereby showcasing the dynamic nature of the Indian startup landscape.
Growth-stage Deals: The said 8 Startups managed a total of $104.8 Million. The most prominent investment was made in Visit Health, a telehealth and wellness platform that raised $30 million in its Series B funding round. Other key participants included Neo, a company in the business of wealth and asset management, which raised $26.5 million, and ShareChat, a social media platform in vernacular, which raised $16 million. Country Delight, a D2C dairy and daily essentials brand, and e-commerce solution provider ShopDeck secured $8.45 million and $7.85 million, respectively.
On the early-stage front, 19 startups raised a cumulative $9.8 million. Leading the fire here was B2B agri-processing platform Agrizy, with Scimplify, a sourcing and manufacturing platform for specialty chemicals, following on its tail. Other well-known early-stage startups included personal care e-commerce startup Kindlife, stockbroking platform Punch, and extended reality startup Metadome.ai. Two of them—IppoPay and FlexiBees—did not disclose their funding amounts.
Bengaluru topped the city-wise chart of maximum number of funding deals, with 11 startups having raised funds, followed by Delhi-NCR, Mumbai, Chennai, Pune, Udaipur, and Chandigarh. At the segment level, Fintech and Healthtech were the segment toppers, having managed to lock in five deals each. There was a lot of action in other sectors such as e-commerce, foodtech, biotech, SaaS, and agritech.
The week mainly saw the dominance of Series A funding rounds that amounted to 10 deals, followed by 7 Seed rounds, and 4 Series B rounds. Three pre-Series A rounds and three Debt deals were made. Also in the mix were Series C and Angel rounds.
Activity was just so rampant that the sizable week over week drop in total funding got glossed over: Total funding was down 46.81% from the $334M mark last week at $177.68M. For the past 8 weeks now, the average funding per week is around $297.56 million with an average of 29 deals per week.
Apart from participating in funding activities, three new startup-focused funds were announced. Consumer-focused venture capital firm Sauce VC closed its third fund at Rs 365 crore. O’Neil Capital Management India bets on stability with quant fund The UK financial services firm has made a foray into product management by launching a quant quantamental fund that aims to achieve consistent returns with minimal drawdown. Pantomath Capital Management sees major close on value investing fund Pantomath Capital Management seen substantial close its second investment vehicle, Pantomath Value Investing Fund I, at $50 million.
The week also saw some major appointments and exits across companies: there were 11 major appointments, including that of Sairam Krishnamurthy at Swiggy Instamart and Ramesh Padmanabhan at Core Integra. Meanwhile, Manish Tiwary, one of the top operations executives of Amazon in India, resigned after an almost eight-year tenure at Amazon.
Of the overall, six were mergers and acquisitions-related deals Key transactions saw Nazara acquisition Fusebox Games, and Instawork take over Able Jobs. Layoffs Other major action occurred on the layoffs also as used two wheeler retailer BeepKart laid off over 100 employees and ShareChat announced reducing 5% of its workforce as part of its performance review process.
All in all, it explained the week that spoke of the resilience and adaptability of the Indian startup ecosystem, with a diversity of various kinds of sectors sparking interest from investors and new funds being set up to back that growth in the future.
