Indian startups raise $14.5 billion in 2019

Startups in India raised $14.5 billion (excluding debt) through 1,185 funding rounds in 2019, with hotel aggregators, helped by Oyo Rooms’ $3.2-billion fundraise, and e-commerce logistics being the top-funded industries.

Indian startups this year got 25 times more funding than the $550-million they raised in 2010, according to data analytics firm Tracxn’s latest India Tech Annual Factsheet 2019. They had raised $11.9 billion and $15 billion, excluding debt, in 2018 and 2017.

The report says that out of the 1,894 companies founded this year, 887 received funding. The year also saw nine startups, one more than 2018, join the coveted unicorn club of companies valued at $1 billion or more. These include online grocer bigbasket, e-commerce logistics services provider Delhivery, Lenskart, and data management firm Druva.

Tracxn also sees 60 companies as soonicorns—those have the potential to become a unicorn in the near future. OYO Rooms aced the top-funding round category with its $1.5 billion Series F funding from Sequoia Capital, Lightspeed Venture Partners, and SoftBank Investment Advisers.

Vijay Shekhar Sharma-led Paytm got the second-biggest round with $1 billion in Series G from existing investors SoftBank Investment Advisers, and Ant Financial, and others. Meanwhile, B2B trading platform Udaan got $585 million in a Series D funding round from Altimeter Capital, Hillhouse Capital Group, GGV Capital, and others.

American venture capital firm Sequoia Capita was the biggest investor in Indian startups in 2019, followed by Accel Partners, and New York-headquartered Tiger Global Management.

Geographically, Tracxn says, Delhi-NCR (National Capital Region) saw the most number of startups being founded (2,562) between 2017 and 2019. The region owns 33% of the startup market share. Bengaluru came in second at 1,587 or 21% of the market, while Mumbai was the third with 1,027 or 13% market share.

This year, four tech firms also made their stock market debut. B2B listing platform IndiaMART listed in July this year, with IPO market cap of $407 million, while Gurugram-based mobile marketing platform Affle debuted in July with IPO market cap of $269 million.