As of June, 2016, India’s capital Delhi attracted more venture capital funds than all other Indian cities combined. In terms of VC money, total of $917 million was infused into Delhi-NCR startups across 155 deals, which more than 50% of the total venture capital infusion across India.
As per Tracxn’s blog, during the first half of 2016, 453 Indian startups attracted $1.8 billion of venture capital; and 50.95% of this overall capital was lapped up by startups based in Delhi alone.
With an average ticket size of $5.8 million investment, Delhi also tops the list of raking in maximum average investments. Ibibo Group based in Gurgaon tops the chart for Delhi-NCR as it received $250 million in Series C funding from Naspers, while Snapdeal is at #2 with investments of $200 million and LensKart is at #3 with investments of $601 million.
Some other highlights from the report:
- Bangalore is the most friendly city when it comes to early stage startups. Total of 96 deals materialized in Bangalore as angel funding and for seed stage startups
- Ahmedabad, Jaipur and Chennai are slowly turning out into major startup hubs, as these cities are attracting investments in middle-staged startups – notable being Stayzilla in Bangalore and CarDekho in Jaipur
- Ahmedabad, Chennai and Jaipur collectively attracted $34 million in funding across 30 startups
- Top 5 startup cities of India are: Delhi, Bangalore, Mumbai, Pune & Hyderabad
3 Reasons Investors Are Attracted Towards Delhi
a) IIT & Beyond: Besides intense rivalry between Snapdeal and Flipkart, what is the common feature among them? It’s IIT Delhi, whose passouts are co-founders of both Snapdeal and Flipkart. Besides, there is Paytm founded in Noida, Bluestone, MobiKwik, CashKaro and host of other startups which originated from Delhi and created a solid foundation for making Delhi India’s #1 startup destination. There is a reason Mark Zuckerberg chose IIT Delhi for town hall meeting.
b) Vibrant community: Compared to other Indian cities, Delhi boasts of a strong startup community which encourages collaboration and networking, leading to partnerships and more startups. Facebook groups such as Delhi Startups and Digital Defynd quickly scaled to become a full fledged community of entrepreneurs and innovators, which directly and indirectly fuels to startup movement in the city.
c) Population Advantage: Delhi NCR is world’s one of the largest urban agglomeration & India’s most populated region with a population of 4.6 crore. During 2011-12, Delhi-NCR churned out GDP of $128 billion, which was 7% of overall India’s GDP. Delhi NCR constitutes of New Delhi, Gurgaon, Noida, Faridabad and Ghaziabad; and besides New Delhi, each of these suburbs is a huge district in their own merit. When a startup gets such a huge geographic area to experiment with, then it automatically attracts investors’ attention, and the rest is history.
Do Checkout Indian Startup Funding & Investment Chart [2016] from Trak.in