Indian startups saw over 250 acquisitions in 2021: Entrackr report

The Indian startup ecosystem attained record numbers last year — be it with fundraising, minting unicorns or employee share buyback programs by companies. There’s another metric that the ecosystem saw record numbers in: acquisitions. The Indian startup ecosystem had more than 250 startups get acquired or acquihired by larger companies during 2021, according to our data-tracking platform Fintrackr.

Where edtech startups such as Byju’s, Unacademy and upGrad made headlines for their acquisition spree, startups in the e-commerce roll up space such as Mensa Brands, GlobalBees, 10club, Upscalio and fitness tech platform Cultfit (Curefit) also took over smaller brands, recording the highest number of acquisitions last year.

Per data collated by Fintrackr, edtech unicorn Byju’s was in the top position with 10 acquisitions in its portfolio just in 2021. Following this, four Thrasio style startups such as Mensa Brands, Upscalio, GlobalBees and 10club collectively took over 30 smaller brands during the same period. Another startup in the space, Goat Brand Labs had also announced that it took over 11 brands, however, the Rishi Vasudev-led company only disclosed the name of one brand i.e. Frangipani.

Overall, e-commerce roll up aka Thrasio style companies acquired around 46 brands in quick succession during 2021. 

Moving on to other companies—Curefit and its sub-brand Cultfit collectively acquired seven startups last year. Other companies in this list include Curefoods, a cloud kitchen startup founded by Ankit Nagori which acquired seven startups, edtech unicorn Unacademy with five acquisitions and upGrad and content to commerce platform Good Glamm Group with four each. 

The details of all acquisitions can be found here.

While the deal sizes of the acquisitions by e-commerce roll-up companies were relatively small, edtech company Byju’s spent a whopping of around $2.5 billion to acquire the 10 companies last year. Aakash Educational Services was its largest deal at around $1 billion. The company also shelled out around $600 million for Great Learning and $500 million for US-based Epic.

Fintrackr has also prepared a list of top 10 acquisitions by deal size in 2021. The acquisition of BillDesk by PayU in a $4.7 billion deal was the largest in terms of deal size, followed by the acquisition of a majority stake in BigBasket by Tata Digital for about $1.2 billion. In the top 10 list, Byju’s added four companies including Aakash, Great Learning, Epic and Tynker.

It’s worth mentioning that startups and companies in the top 10 categories spent $9.4 billion for the acquisitions.

Category wise, e-commerce roll up saw the largest number of acquisitions in 2021 with 46 deals followed by edtech in which 33 startups got acquired by the larger groups. The deals in edtech also include upGrad, Teachmint and Vedantu which acquired 4 startups, 3 startups and 2 startups, respectively.

Fintech saw the consolidation of 30 startups last year. Apart from the acquisition of BillDesk by PayU, other notable acquisitions in the fintech segment include Happay by CRED in a $180 million deal, Payback by BharatPe in a $27 million deal and Finin by Open in a $10 million deal. The year also saw its maiden acquisition by global payments giant Stripe in India via Recko. However, they did not disclose the deal amount.

Startups in healthcare, SaaS, e-commerce and foodtech were the next top categories as far as acquisitions are concerned.

Monthwise, November saw the most number of acquisitions with 44 deals followed by October and December in which 41 startups and 31 startups got acquired by larger companies.

Out of 254 acquisitions, 116 deals were completed in the last quarter i.e. October-December.