Startups in India received $468 million in venture funding across 51 deals during October 2020, according to data from Venture Intelligence. The number is far lower than the $1150 million funding in September across 52 deals.
When asked about the month on month and year on year decline, Venture Intelligence founder Arun Natarajan said, “I would not read much into the value of the deals declining month-on-month. While September saw three $150 Mn+ deals- Byjus, Dream11 & Unacademy- getting announced, the mega-deals announced in October were smaller in ticket size (and noticeably non-EdTech). The fact that SoftBank has registered its first new investment in India for the year- in the form of Unacademy (announced in September) – comes as an added booster.”
Some of the top VC investments in October include FreshtoHome, which raised $106 million, RazorPay, which turned unicorn with a $100 mn investment, ChargeBee which raised $55 mn, Finova Capital which raised $36 mn and Flexiloans, which raised $20 mn.
“From a sector perspective, after the mega funding of the leaders in the B2C Edtech segment, it would not be a surprise if we see a slowing down in the mega-deals in this space towards the year-end, This would probably be positive for other sectors that we are awaiting a fresh look from investors post the COVID lockdowns,” Natarajan said.
The seed and Series A segments were most active in terms of the number of deals. While Sequoia closed the most deals during this period, Matrix and Lightspeed came second. Fintech was the sector favourite, followed by Edtech, Agribiz, E-commerce and AI. Bengaluru clocked the most number of deals followed by Mumbai, NCR Delhi, Chennai and others.