Startup Funding Plunges by 75% Compared to Q1'22: Tracxn Report

The report is a detailed overview of the Indian startup ecosystem, including funding activities, investor exits, and wider trends.

Startup Funding Plunges by 75% Compared to Q1'22: Tracxn Report

Tracxn, the world's leading market intelligence platform, released their 'Tracxn geo Quarterly Report: India Technology - Q1 2023'. This report, which is Tracxn's quarterly proprietary document, provides an in-depth overview of India's startup ecosystem. It includes information on funding activities, exits by investors through acquisitions andIPOs, as well as trends in the fundraising landscape.

The report shows that Indian startups raised $2.8 billion in funding in Q1 2023 - 75% less than the $11.9 billion for the same period last year. Rising inflation and high interest rates are two major reasons for the drop in funding. Funding volumes are also declining due to a decrease in late-stage funding. This has fallen by 79% in Q1’23 ($1.8 billion) as compared to Q1’22.

Further, the report revealed that 9 $100 million+ rounds of funding were held in this quarter with companies such as PhonePe and Lenskart. These include Insurance Dekho, FreshtoHome foods. TI Clean Mobility, FreshtoHome foods. KreditBee sourcing large ticket deals. PhonePe raised $650 million in multiple Series A rounds in Q1 2023. This valuing the company as $12 billion. Lenskart raised $500m in Series J rounds led by an Abu Dhabi Investment Authority (ADIA), at a valuation $4.5 billion. Fintech, enterprise applications and retail were the top funding sectors for this quarter. Fintech saw a 150% funding increase compared with Q4 2022, but this is still a decrease of 51% compared with Q1 2022. The quarter didn't result in any new Indian unicorns. Q1 2022 saw 14 unicorns emerging. The situation has remained stable in terms of acquisitions QoQ with 46 transactions compared to 43 in Q4'22.

Tracxn Technologies Ltd. provides data intelligence platforms for private market research. It tracks 1.4 million entities using 1805 feeds that are categorised across all industries, sub-sectors and networks.