Indian startups receive $12.7 Bn funding in 2019, Sequoia tops VC Funding chart

According to DataLabs’ upcoming — The Annual Indian Tech Startup Funding Report 2019, the Indian startups secured $12.7 Bn in funding last year, a 15% spike compared to 2018. Indian startup economy is entering the new decade with over $58 Bn in fundraising and 2,984 funded startups between 2014-2019.

However, the historical data suggests that the year has gone by had the lowest number of startups funded (664) in the last five years with seed-stage funding deals dropping by 53% compared to 2016. With $252 Mn in funding, seed-stage deal value fell by 44% (compared to 2018) as only 306 seed funding deals were recorded, the report noted.

As per DataLabs estimates, the funding amount and deal count in 2020 will be around $12.6 Bn at a 1% decline from 2019, nevertheless, the investment activity is expected to rise in 2021.

Ecommerce and fintech with $2.6 Bn funding each took the top slot in funding with 93 deals and 125 deals respectively. 

“In the context of funding amount between 2014 and 2019, ecommerce continued to remain at the top by the end of 2019. The growing investor confidence towards sub-sectors such as vertical e-commerce, social commerce and private label businesses is one major factor for ecommerce maintaining its lead,” a DataLabs spokesperson, said.

With this, enterprisetech had a blockbuster year with total funding of $1.15 Bn across 114 deals in 2019, the sector recorded a 49% surge in total funding amount compared to 2018.

In terms of investor participation, the report noted that that number of unique investors in 2019 saw a minor fall as compared to the last two years. The Indian startup economy saw 275 unique VCs participating in funding, continuing to fall from the peak of 315 unique VCs in 2017 and 283 in 2018.

As per DataLabs analysis, Sequoia took the crown as the most active VC of 2019 with 53 deals, followed by Accel which participated in 38 deals. Blume Ventures, Matrix Partners and Tiger Global were in the top 5 VCs in 2019.