Indian start-ups have gone neck and neck with their Chinese counterparts when it comes to attracting venture capital (VC) funding among the Asia-Pacific (APAC) countries between January and May this year.
According to GlobalData, a London-based data and analytics company, Indian firms raised $8.1 billion in a total of 499 VC funding deals between January and May. This represents 93 percent of how much start-ups raised in the whole calendar year of 2020.
Chinese startups raised a total of $37.4 billion in 1,303 VC funding deals – the highest amount among Asia-Pacific countries - until May this year.
Venture Capital is a financing tool for companies and an investment vehicle for wealthy individuals and institutional investors. Wealthy investors like to invest their capital in startups with the possibility of long-term growth.
Talking about the reasons behind the spike in VC investments in Indian startups, Aurojyoti Bose, Lead Analyst at GlobalData, told Sputnik: “Start-ups active in areas (such as education technology and food delivery) are witnessing increased demand during these challenging times and, despite caution, investors have also been placing sizeable bets in these companies (such as Byjus, Zomato).”
Some of the major Indian start-ups which raised huge VC funding include Mohalla Tech ($502 million), Zomato Media ($500 million), Dream11 Fantasy ($400 million), Dream Sports ($400 million), and Swiggy ($343 million).
According to Bose, VC investors continue to place bets on start-ups in the field of technology, retail, food service and financial services, among others.
According to India's Department of Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade, the Start-up India initiative launched by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in 2016 has now picked up pace.
It took only 180 days to add the last 10,000 startups, as compared with 808 days for the first 10,000 at the beginning of the initiative.
The recognised Indian start-ups have contributed significantly to job creation, with 549,842 jobs reported by 48,093 startups with an average number of 11 employees per startup.