It’s good news for the Indian startup ecosystem. India has added nearly 1000 technology startups in the first half of 2017 of which healthcare technology and financial technology companies have lapped up the maximum funding in the past one year.
As per a NASSCOM report, 'Indian Start-up Ecosystem - Traversing the maturity cycle', the total number of startups in the fintech space has gone up to 360 from 275 in 2016, thus registering 31% growth in the number of startups. Similarly in the health tech space, 28% growth has been recorded in the startup base from 250 in the 2016 to 320 in the first half of 2017. Interestingly, these are the two sectors that have also attracted the maximum funding with fintech receiving $200million in 2017 as against only $85 million in 2016. The sector has seen a whopping 135% increase in funding in the past one year.
The funding in healthcare tech segment has witnessed 129% increase in funding from $70 million in FY17 to $160 million in FY18. Attributing to the increased traction in these segments to innovation, Raman Roy, chairman, NASSCOM says, "Sub-segments like digital payments and lending are maturing, while wealth management and insurance-tech emerging as growth areas. Implementation of advanced technology are also becoming prominent, with 33% fintech funding towards advanced technologies like Artificial Intelligence (AI) and analytics."
The fact that healthcare tech startups offer affordable solutions to the basic needs of the society through innovative models, has also been gaining a lot of investments. As per the report, the mature segments in this space continue to be health information aggregators, a lot of startups have been mushrooming in the segments such as anomaly detection, disease monitoring and tele-medicine among others.
With India penning a success story in the startup space, India has also moved to the 60th position in the Global Innovation Index as against 81 in 2015. “India has highest proportion of digital talent - 76%, compared to the global average of 56%,” states the report.
Overall, a total of $145 million has been invested into enterprises and SMB focused solutions, of which 90% has been done in SaaS offering companies. The report notes that the corporate have played a crucial role in B2B startups gaining popularity amongst investors across boards.
"The rise of B2B startups augers well for a balanced growth of startup ecosystem, where adequate premium is being paid to all steps of the value chain, rather than to consumer services alone. It is also an encouraging sign to see increasing number of core technology B2B startups in areas such as AI and Blockchain, and this is likely to create more global product companies out of India,” says Alok Mittal, CEO, Indifi Technologies who also serves on boards of Indian Angel Network, and The Indus Entrepreneurs in Delhi.
In terms of source of investments, unicorn funding has been a dominant player with $6.4 billion till September 2017. With 167 percent growth, funding of the start-up ecosystem led by unicorns stood at $6.4 billion till September.
