Start-up funding grew 16% in October, Bengaluru leads

The month of October seemed to be a much better for the Indian start-up ecosystem. 

The sector saw only a 2% decline in the number of deals, but reported a 16% growth in terms of deal value as against the same period of last year. 85 start-ups in India received investment of $259 million in October 2016 from nearly 90 start-ups raising $230 million in October 2015, according to an Inc 42 report.

The report showed that while maximum funding for start-ups were for the late stage, the deals were highest in seed stage. Late stage funding grew by 38% in the number of deals and 89% in funding amount through 2015-16. In October 2016 the late stage funding grew to around $178 million.

A majority of the funding deals to start-ups went to the e-commerce segment, which was at 8%, followed by marketplace (which many such as Flipkart, Snapdeal and others have turned into after the FDI norms came into place) with 7% of the deals. Fintech and Hardware start-ups had 6% each of the funding deals during the month.

Consolidations seems to be continuing in the start-up space in India as the report said that 14 merger and acquisitions deals took place during the month. This includes 9 acquisitions, 3 acqui-hires and 2 mergers.

In terms of cities in India, the maximum funding and deals were seen in Bengaluru with $155 million funding and 26 deals, Mumbai with $34 million funding and 17 deals, followed by Delhi-NCR with $19 million in funding and 25 deals.