India added 23 new unicorns, while China only saw 11 unicorns created in 2022.
India accounts for 20% of all venture capital funding in the APAC region for the first time in 2022.
In global terms, 5% of all VC investments flowed into India, according to IVCA and Bain & Co.’s latest report.
Much of this growth was driven by the world’s China-plus-one strategy and India’s rapid adoption of internet-enabled services.
New emerging startup hubs beyond Bengaluru, Mumbai, and Delhi-NCR received around 18% of the capital, accounting for 9 out of 23 new unicorns in 2022.
Total deal value for unicorns in India declined 33% from $38.5 billion in 2021 to $25.7 billion in 2022.
The decline in volume was driven by average deal size compression from $25 million to $16 million over 2021–2022.
There was also a drop in the $100 million+ deals from 92 to 48 over 2021–2022 as VCs exercised caution on large-ticket size deals.
Deal volume saw a 1.1x growth, led by an expansion in seed-stage to Series B deals.
SaaS and fintech were the most funded sectors in 2022.
Electric Vehicles recorded a 2.4x growth in funding enabled by regulatory support and increasing activity across the EV value chain.
Agritech, space-tech, Generative AI, and Climate-tech are sectors among key early-stage deals.
Consumer tech (which includes e-commerce, edtech, D2C, food delivery, etc.) saw a 55% drop in funding, from $20 billion in 2021 to less than $10 billion in 2021.
Over 80% of deals for top funds, including Sequoia Capital, Accel India, and Lightspeed Venture Partners, were in early-stage companies in 2022.