India’s startup ecosystem has notched up record investment of nearly $ 36 billion in privately held companies this year as demand for digitisation grew manifold amid the Covid-19 pandemic. UK-based Investment data platform Preqin estimates that venture and private equity investments increased three-fold during the year up from the $11 billion mopped up by Indian startups in 2020.
This year, the volume of seed-stage deals dominated with nearly 396 deals aggregating to $705.86 million while about 166 investments at series A amounted to about $1.67 billion, data until December 20, showed.
However, the bulk of the investments were directed towards pre-IPO financing rounds in companies such as Zomato, Ola, Policybazaar and Paytm, with the top 10 deals totalling upto $5.58 billion, Prequin data shared exclusively with ET, showed.
In addition to an increase in the number of deals, Indian startups also raised larger financing rounds compared to previous years as risk capital funds stepped up to take bigger bets on high growth companies early-on. As a result, companies have been able…
