Investments in the Indian start-up ecosystem surged 322 per cent in July year-on-year. They rose to $5.61 billion last month, against $1.33 billion in July 2019, according to data from Tracxn, a firm that tracks investments and financials of private companies and start-ups. The funding that went into Jio Platforms’ alone accounted for nearly 87 per cent of the total amount.
The number of companies that garnered the investment, though, fell to 82 last month, against 120 in the same period in 2019.
Top-funded sectors
The top-funded sectors include telecom ($4,854 million), enterprise infrastructure ($236.2 million), ed-tech ($164.95 million), real estate- and construction-tech ($78.1 million), retail ($57.42 million) and media and entertainment ($53.90 million). The consumer sector, which encompasses online and technology-enabled consumer-facing companies in the business-to-consumer (B2C) space, raised $183.47 million.
On the other hand, travel- and hospitality-tech ($9.88 million), fintech ($18.04 million), auto-tech ($18.13 million) and health-tech ($21.74 million) were among the least funded sectors in July 2020. Furthermore, sectors such as logistics-tech and life sciences did not receive any funding last month. The investment data excludes debt, grant and post IPO rounds.
While Jio Platforms, Nxtra Data, Vedantu, Zolo and Toppr were the top five funded companies in July 2020, the most active investors – based on the number of deals in July – included Mumbai Angels, Matrix Partners India, Accel, LetsVenture and Unicorn India Ventures.