Funding remains flat for Indian startups in February: Entrackr Report

Unlike January, fund inflow for Indian startups did not go past the threshold of $1 billion. But a few large-sized rounds helped maintain the month-on-month growth.

Startups in the country raised $860 million in total across 81 deals, according to the data compiled by Fintrackr. This includes 12 deals worth $448 million in the growth stage and 69 deals worth $411 million in the early stage. Meanwhile, nine startups did not divulge their funding details. In contrast, January saw more than 100 startups mopping up nearly $1.2 billion in funding.

[Year-on-Year Comparison]

Looking at year-on-year data of February for the past three years, homegrown startups raised $1.2 billion in 2021 which saw a huge jump to $3.56 billion in 2022 and now it came down to $860 million in the last month.

[Top 10 Growth stage deals]

To understand the funding across stages, Fintrackr has prepared a list of top 10 funded startups across growth and early stage. In the growth stage deals, February saw two $100 million plus rounds including PhonePe and FreshToHome whereas there were a couple of $50 million plus deals taking the total to nearly $450 million across 12 deals.

Not to forget Mensa Brands, Bike Bazaar, Zypp Electric and Simple Energy — all of which also picked up significant money during the funding crunch across the Indian startup ecosystem. Notably, no startup has managed to enter the unicorn club since September last year.

[Top 10 Early stage deals]

InsuranceDekho led the show for early stage companies as the CarDekho-incubated firm scooped up $150 million in one of the largest Series A rounds by an Indian startup. Upskilling platform NxtWave, drontech company Garuda Aerospace, SaaS startup Mintoak and web3 gaming company Kratos also made it to the top five list.

Among the early stage deals, Kratos also caught the attention as it raised $20 million in its seed funding.

[Stage wise deals]

February saw 38 seed funding whereas 5 deals were in pre seed stage. This was followed by Series A where 16 startups got funded. In growth and late stage deals, Series C and Series D saw two deals each while three deals remained undisclosed which include PhonePe’s ongoing financing round.

[Segment and city wise deals]

Segment wise, SaaS, e-commerce and edtech were on top in February as they collectively formed 40% of the total number of deals during the last month. Fintech, AI and EV were next on the list. It’s worth highlighting that fintech was on top in terms of amount raised.

City wise, Bengaluru was way ahead with 38 deals followed by Delhi-NCR, Mumbai, Chennai and Pune with 12, 9, 6 and 4 deals respectively.

[Mergers and Acquisitions]

Indian startups saw 14 M&A deals, a little below 18 such deals in January. The acquisition of Upwards by LendingKart remained the top in terms of deal size. SpeedForce by ReadyAssist and myPaisa by Siply were the other two disclosed deals in the list.

​​[Layoffs]

Byju’s alone fired over 1,000 employees in February along with half a dozen startups including FarEye, MyGate, Pocket Aces, Polygon, HackerEarth and Phable Care that also shed employees to cut costs.

However, the number of startups opting for layoffs during February reduced to 7 from 27 in January. This is a good sign for the ecosystem after a blood bath in the past few months.