It Is Not Just About Funding Winter

Investor focus on quality companies driven by caution and scalability.

- RUKMINI RAO

‘FUNDING WINTER’ for start-ups has been the buzz for past 18 24 months. A recent report by data platform Tracxn throws up interesting numbers. In first 11 months of 2023 (until December 5), start-ups in India received $7 billion in funding, lowest in five years and down 72% from record $25 billion in 2022. More important, late stage funding saw the biggest drop of 73% from $15.6 billion to $4.2 billion. Early-stage funding dipped 70% to $2.2 billion from $7.3 billion in same period of 2022. There were just 17 big-ticket rounds of $100 million-plus compared with 55 last year. Some of the late stage start-ups that got more than $500 million were IPO-bound PhonePe and D2C eyewear company Lenskart. Ola-Electric , Zetwerk, InsuranceDekho and KreditBee got sub$200 million.