India Rises To 17th Spot From 37th in StartupBlink’s Startup Ecosystem Ranking

The Indian startup ecosystem has grown tremendously over the past year, if you look at indicators such as new startups, funding and the number of investors in the country. According to data released by StartupBlink, India moved up to 17th position in 2018 from 37th spot last year in the Startup Ecosystem Ranking for 2019.

India ranks 17 globally among 100 countries, based on the strength of its startup ecosystem, according to StartupBlink, which tracks startup ecosystems on a number of parameters.

It used data from startups, accelerators and coworking spaces registered on its platforms as well as data received from global partners such as Crunchbase and SimilarWeb.

“The cities with the most vibrant startup ecosystems in India are Bengaluru, New Delhi and Mumbai,” the report said about the Indian ecosystem.

In terms of global rankings, the top three spots remained unchanged with the United States, United Kingdom and Canada taking the first, second and third rank respectively.

“India is one of this report’s happiest surprises. The country is now ranked 17th, a staggering 20 spot increase, as the World Bank dramatically upgrades its ‘Doing Business’ score, supported by a growing entrepreneurial spirit throughout the country,” the report said.

The report has taken the startup ecosystems of 1,000 cities and 100 countries into consideration.

The rise in India’s rank can be attributed to a number of factors besides the ones stated by StartupBlink. According to Inc42 DataLabs, 3800 new startups were launched in India during the last year. Overall, Indian startups received $11 Bn of funding through 743 deals in 2018.

The sectors which received the most funding were: ecommerce; consumer services (hyperlocal) and fintech. The biggest round of funding in 2008 was of Swiggy’s Series H in which the food delivery service received a staggering $1 Bn in funding.

In StartupBlink’s cities ranking, six Indian entries made it to top 100. Bengaluru was as the top startup city in India at 11th, while New Delhi followed in the 18th spot. Mumbai stood at 29th rank, while Chennai, Hyderabad and Pune also made it to top 100.

According to Inc42’s ‘the state of the Indian startup ecosystem report’, the top three cities in India at the end of 2018 were Bengaluru, Delhi-NCR and Mumbai which had 11,000, 8500 and 9,000 startups respectively. Among the leading cities, startups in Bengaluru received $4.7 Bn, while those in Delhi-NCR received a funding of $4.4 Bn, followed by those in Mumbai which received a funding of $914 Mn in 2018.

While talking about the growth obstacles in the Indian startup ecosystem, the StartupBlink report said the major challenge “will be improving the overall quality of startups, and increasing the number of unicorns than currently exist.”