Indian startups raised around $1 billion a week in January and February

• Indian startups have raised $8 billion in the first two months of 2022.
  
• Indian startups have already cracked 277 deals in January and February 2022.
  
• The ecosystem has also witnessed the entry of 10 startups into the unicorn club.

Indian startups have raised $8 billion in the first two months of 2022, according to Business Insider’s calculations. This means that nearly $1 billion was invested in the startup ecosystem on a weekly basis in January and February.

The ecosystem had raised $42 billion across 1,579 deals all through 2021 and $11.5 billion across 924 deals in 2020.

Indian startups have already cracked 277 deals in the first two month of 2022. This includes Reliance-backed Dunzo, Nykaa’s rival Purple, Zomato’s rival Swiggy and others. The data has been based on Entrackr’s weekly funding reports.

The ecosystem has also witnessed the entry of 10 startups into the unicorn club, which includes startups valued over a billion dollars. The list of 2022 includes software-as-a-service (SaaS) companies Fractal, DarwinBox, Hasura and Uniphore, edtech company Lead School, logistics company XpressBees, and ecommerce platforms Livspace, Dealshare and ElasticRun.

Direct-to-consumer (D2C) Mamaearth too announced its entry into the unicorn club on January 1 this year. However, it was already reported in the media based on regulatory filings of the company.

India is currently home to 91 unicorns, according to Venture Intelligence data. This includes companies like BharatPe, Cred, Groww, Zerodha, Upstox, Spinny, Cars24, ShareChat and more.

Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, during the budget speech of 2022, highlighted that “startups have emerged as a driver of growth for our economy”.

Commerce and industry minister Piyush Goyal in January said that India should aim to raise 75 unicorns in 75 weeks to the 75th anniversary of Independence. "We have 43 unicorns added in 45 weeks, since the start of 'Azadi ka Amrit Mahotsav' on March 12, 2021,” he said.

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