India startup funding falls 44% WoW to $186 million amid slowdown in big-ticket deals
The latest tally was also 17.6% lower than the $225.8 million raised across 23 funding rounds in the week before that, indicating a moderation in fundraising activity.
The week’s largest deal came from Mumbai based wealthtech firm Veriqus Group, which raised around $40.1 million in a funding round led by Norwest Venture Partners.
Followed by banking software startup BusinessNext, which raised $40 million in a Series B funding round from ServiceNow Ventures, the investment arm of US cloud software company ServiceNow.
Hyderabad-based Raghu Vamsi Aerospace Group also raised $40 million in a funding round led by Norwest and Skegen Asset Management.
Neo Group rasied $36.3 million, Plazza secured $15 million, while Ekkaa raised $10.4 million, making them the other major fundraisers during the week.
The slowdown was led by a steep fall in late-stage funding, which declined to $76.4 million from $293.1 million in the previous week. However, early-stage funding rose sharply to $105.4 million, compared with $35.7 million a week earlier and $41 million in the preceding week.
Meanwhile, seed-stage funding slipped to $4.4 million from $6 million in the previous week and $17.1 million in the week before that, as per Tracxn data.
Overall, the number of funding rounds also declined, with startups securing 13 deals during the week, down from 19 in the previous week and 23 in the week before that.
The data suggests startup fundraising lost momentum during the week, with a sharp drop in late-stage investments outweighing the pickup in early-stage funding and pulling overall capital raised lower.
