Indian startups kickstart festive season with a blast in Q3 2021

The Indian startup ecosystem entered the tenth month of 2021 with a bang. There may be still a while to go for Diwali, but stakeholders have already seen a lot of firecrackers bursting and have been celebrating throughout the year.

Monday October 18, 2021 , 3 min Read

The Indian startup ecosystem entered the tenth month of 2021 with a bang. There may be still a while to go for Diwali, but stakeholders have already seen a lot of firecrackers bursting and have been celebrating throughout the year.

After raising $23 billion across 1,000+ funding deals in nine months, and 33 new entrants in the coveted unicorn club, with a $1 billion-plus valuation, India is now standing close to its global incumbents like the US and China.

The latest additions to the unicorn club were IPO-bound fintech firm MobiKwik and automobile classifieds platform CarDekho.

While 2021 has been about the constant anointing of unicorns in the Indian startup ecosystem, initial public offerings (IPOs) also grabbed headlines quite often.

After the successful IPO of foodtech unicorn Zomato earlier this year, other tech startups, including Nykaa, PolicyBazaar, MobiKwik, Tracxn, Delhivery, Cartrade, and Paytm, are also in the queue. Meanwhile, SaaS giant Freshworks recently listed itself in the US.

Nevertheless, Q3 2021 startup funding trends are phenomenal. Here are some key trends that YourStory Research has observed in the past three action-packed months.

Q3 Funding Report — *Image Credit: YS Design*

The Interview

Launched by Aniket Jindal, Ahmed Al-Balaghi, and Sachin Tomar in 2019, Biconomy simplifies the development and UX of blockchain-based apps through gas-efficient meta-transactions. It has over 30 project integrations and has relayed millions of blockchain transactions, the founders claim.

Editor’s Pick: Woodstock Fund

Since early 2020, interest in blockchain, crypto, Decentralised Finance (DeFi), and non-fungible tokens (NFTs) have skyrocketed.

Pranav Sharma and Himanshu Yadav started Woodstock Fund in 2019 to invest across blockchain settlement layers, service and infra, privacy and apps. Since then, they’ve backed promising blockchain startups such as Elrond, Covalent, Biconomy, and others. Read more.

Startup Spotlight

Making voice-over easy

Anant Tripathi, Chakrapani Mishra, and Diwakar Chopra believed voice-to-text and vice-versa would be imperative in the content creation world. This need had become more prominent during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Delhi-NCR-based text-to-speech startup Speechmax helps content creators generate free voice-overs in Hindi and English, using its proprietary AI and NLP technology, in a few seconds. Read more.

News & Updates

AI-based sales enablement and B2B platform ApplicateAI on Sunday claimed it is in “advanced stage” of raising $30 million in a Series A round from venture capital firms. Seeing the deal through would value the startup at $160 million.

VLCC Health Care Limited, which is set to come out with an initial share sale, has raised nearly Rs 37 crore by selling shares to a foreign entity. As many as 6,27,804 equity shares have been issued for around Rs 37 crore to Bahamas-based Zall Holdings Ltd, according to a filing made by the company to the corporate affairs ministry.

Researchers at different Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) are working on the development of a first-of-its-kind "smart speed warning system" for vehicles, which will alert the driver on the basis of road infrastructure and geographical location to avoid overspeeding-related crashes.