Indian start-ups raise $6.5 billion in Jun-21 quarter

The COVID 2.0 may have impacted the manufacturing operations across major sectors. However, the second round of pandemic had little impact on the start-up fundraising scenario in India. On the other hand, the start-ups raised 71% more in the Jun-21 quarter at $6.50 billion compared to the Mar-21 quarter. 

While there were a total of 160 start-up funding deals, there were a few prominent high-value deals that marked the Jun-21 quarter. Swiggy raised $800 million, ShareChat $502 million, Byju’s $340 million, PharmEasy $323 million, Meesho $300 million, Pine Labs $285 million, Delhivery $277 million, Zeta $250 million, Cred $215 million and Urban Company $188 million. These 10 Unicorns raised more than 50% of the start-up funding in Jun-21 quarter. 

Prior to the June quarter, India had 42 Unicorns. A Unicorn is a term used to describe a start-up that achieves a $1 billion valuation. During the June quarter alone, India added another 11 Unicorns to take the total Unicorn count to 53 as of the end of Jun-21. Most of the start-up funding has flowed into digital start-ups with a strong futuristic tilt.

Let us turn to the specific sectoral mix of the start-up funding flows. Fintech accounted for 27% of the total start-up flows in the June quarter while Food Tech stood at 13%, Enterprise Tech at 11% and EdTech at 10%. More than a quarter of the Unicorns added in the June quarter were also Fintech.

In terms of nature of business, out of the 160 deals in the quarter, B2B start-ups raised $1.90 billion across 85 deals while B2C start-ups raised $4.50 billion across 75 deals. The balance contribution came from Deep Tech which raised $450 million in the quarter. The average deal size in B2C was more than twice that of B2B deals.