New Delhi | 27th November 2019: The Indian startup story is going strong and the homegrown startups are making it big riding high on the innovative need-based ideas. The first half of 2019 has seen homegrown Indian startups raised $4.88 billion, an increase of 8.7 per cent from the same period last year. According to Risers Accelerator — a conglomerate of 35 individuals based out of Delhi total worth of Rs.3000 crore, promoting start-ups with good business potential — the applications for investment in Food-tech startups has grown manifold.
“In the current fiscal year, Risers Accelerator received 70% more startup requests from food-tech than the previous year. We received 50+ requests from food-tech startups in 2018 and this year we have 88+ requests from the same sector. This shows a tremendous increase of startups in this sector and huge potential for investors. The reason being for this rise is that Indians live for food and technology has improved it availability, reach, price and convenience. The popularity and acceptance of startups related to food encouraged many people to come with ideas that can further improve the market,” says Mr.Rachit Chawla, Director, Finance and Technology, Risers Accelerator.
The funding ecosystem has also got matured and investors are going in for quality founders who have a global vision and complete understanding of the ecosystem. The Indian startup ecosystem has scaled to become third largest start hub in the World followed after US and China. According to a recent study, 753 unique startups were funded during 2014-2018 and 87.57 per cent of total funding was received by the growth-stage startups of Tier 1 cities,” says Mr. Chawla.
He further added on overall scenario of startups, “The average deal size has increased in the last few months due to the increased confidence of investors in the Indian startups. In the first half of this year, women-led companies have raised a total of $487 million from 68 deals while it was only $274 million spread across 61 deals last year.”
The trend of food delivery applications was started by Food Panda, which came up with low pricing policy and ruled the market for almost two years without competition. Then came Swiggy with better tracking of delivery executives and slowly gained market showing to the startup world the power of technology in gaining traction. “So when we go through the applications, the first thing that we pay attention to is the technology and the model that they propose. India has developed into a market where only offers will not help you gain the loyalty of the customers; the plan should be comprehensive enough for a long term engagement. Thus, the retention policy is of utmost importance”, highlights Mr. Chawla.
