$28 billion—riot of PE-VC Funding by private firms

Although the severe second wave of the Covid-19 pandemic disrupted businesses across sectors during the early months of 2021, it hasn’t stopped venture capital (VC) and private equity (PE) firms from cherry-picking opportunities and parking their funds in Indian businesses with growth potential and offering good returns. The numbers tell a story. Between January and August this year, privately-held companies, including startups, have raised a whopping $28.35 billion in total funding—which was spread across 1367 deals—according to data from analytics firm Tracxn.

E-commerce, financial technology (fintech), enterprise applications, education technology (edtech), food and agritech were the top-funded sectors during the period under review. Tracxn’s data reveals that in the e-commerce space, Walmart-owned Flipkart raised an eye-popping $3.6 billion in a Series J funding round in July this year led by GIC, Canada Pension Plan Investment Board, SoftBank Vision Fund 2, and Walmart. The funding round valued Flipkart Group at $37.6 billion post-money. The other key deals in the space include Meesho—a social commerce platform—raising $300 million and business-to-business (B2B) e-commerce startup Udaan raising $280 million. The data includes funding rounds between January 1 and August 31, 2021.