Indian Startup Funding Report April 2016 – The Series A Crunch

Yet another month has gone by and there are now even stronger signals of the upcoming downturn in the Indian ecosystem. We at Inc42 don’t believe in speculations but rather in data backed signals. So we went ahead and crunched some numbers for April’s funding scenario – Trends are changing, and so is the ecosystem.

Although, the number of deals for the month of April 2016 is still higher (by 31%) than April 2015, the total amount of funding (disclosed) has come down by 74% from $1 Bn to $0.3Bn (Ola and Quikr comprising $0.55 Bn of the total funding last year in the same month). Also, Bangalore no longer entertains the spot of startup utopia, neither in terms of deals or amount; it has come down to 23% (from 33%), and Delhi/NCR is found to emerged with 38% of the share (in terms of deals) as compared to 33% that was observed during the Q1 of 2016.

But first let’s get to the numbers and then we’ll get to some of the key takeaways from the report:

Key Takeaways

This report by Inc42 DataLabs, analyzes the current scenario and emerging trends across the various dimensions that define the Indian startup ecosystem for the month of April 2016. We tried to compile all the rising startups that acquired funding in the month of April 2016. The analysis includes 76 startups that have collectively raised $300 Mn (Disclosed).

The Rise of the Pre-Series A

Two years ago, the term Pre-Series A was almost non-existent. The term started around late 2014 and now has taken hold in the early stage market filling the gap between the early stage funded companies and the elusive Series A. This trend can also be answered by the increasing crunch in Series A.

Ticket Size Drops & The Fading Million Dollar Cheques In Early Stage

This April saw almost an 80% increase in the number of early stage startups that were funded, but however there was an overall decrease in the total funding in the early stage market; Implying a drop in the ticket sizes in early stage sector.

Another interesting pattern we noticed was the decline in the $1 Million plus cheques in the early stage market, which had a prominence in early 2015 but had a huge drop off into 2016.

Bangalore’s Saturation State? Rise Of Delhi

One other pattern that stood out was the decline in the funding activity in Bangalore with Delhi finally dethroning Bangalore.

The Series A & Late Stage Funding Crunch

Despite the number of stories on the market slowing down, there was no real data to support it until now. Compared to last year and the last quarter, there is significant drop in the funding activity in the Series A and Late stage market.

While April might be a little early for these trends to be too significant, let’s see what the rest of the quarter has in store for the Indian Startup Ecosystem.

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[Research & Analysis by Ankan Das & Pooja Sareen; Graphics & Designs by Satya Yadav]

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