Indian Startups Raised An Impressive $3.9 Billion In The Last 6 Months

$3.9 billion was raised by Indian startups in the first 6 months of 2019, a sharp 44.4% increase from this period last year. The sheer amount of money didn't only come to giants like Flipkart or Ola but also to a wider set of companies in all sectors. The data is recorded by Venture Intelligence.

This year's investments are also nearly equal to what Indian firms received in the whole years of 2016 and 2017, which respectively marked $4.2 billion and $4.3 billion. This means we are seeing a great surge of venture capital in the last 18 months.

Both very early-stage investments and series F fundings for younger-than-10-year-old companies are counted into the data.

According to Sandeep Murthy, a professional investor from Lightbox Ventures, some companies have come up with how to solve "truly unique problems" are seeing growth as backed by outside capital fundings.

But the amount of investments doesn't only come to large consumer internet companies alone. Logistics-related, software B2B are seeing money flowing in also.

As per Murthy:

Recent billion-dollar deals such as the Flipkart case are considered the motivation for India's surge in investments. The giant e-commerce platform was purchased by US biggest retailer Walmart with $16 billion, which made the firm's investors up 50% to tenfold their ventures. Some of the big winners are Japan-based Softbank and American Tiger Management.

Mukul Arora, who invested in Softbank's Paytm and food deliverer Swiggy, said about the Flipkart effect:

According to Arora, investments are becoming more "aggressive" even in earlier-stage deals, which formerly occurred to later-stage deals.

Murthy said:

As the investments in Indian startups start booming, investors are also becoming more cautious and are aiming towards higher-valuation businesses. According to Murthy, he would rather pay a little more for a better business than get a cheap deal with an ineffective one.