The National Association of Software and Services Companies (NASSCOM), in association with Praxis Global in a report on quarterly investment in tech start-ups, said that Indian companies in the fourth quarter of calendar year 2021 (CY21) received a record $7.2 bn in funding. This was 18 percent more than the previous quarter it added.

Fintech and retail technologies were the two top sectors which attracted 46 per cent of the total funding.

In the last two quarters of calendar year 2021, Indian start-ups raised more than $6billion each in funding, the report noted. Interestingly the deal sizes also have gone up with enterprise technology start-ups remaining the most active. The NASSCOM-Praxis joint report noted that 23 deals were of ticket size greater than $100 million compared to 14 in the third quarter of CY21.

14 new unicorns

Stating that 14 new unicorns were added to the Indian start-up sector in the last quarter of calendar year 2021, the report noted that six of them came from the retail and fintech sector.

While Mensa became the fastest Indian start-up to turn unicorn in six months, NoBroker was India’s first proptech unicorn. Amongst other key trends the report noted were that, Payments and BFSI (Banking, Financial Services and Insurance) investors raised 47 percent of the total fintech funding while B2C (Business to Consumer) start-ups raised over $5.6 billion across 112 deals.