Venture capital funding into Indian startups has moved into a steady upward zone. For three weeks in a row, the inflow of funding has increased, providing a certain level of confidence to the ecosystem. Total funding for the week was $246 million from 25 deals. In contrast, theprevious weeksaw an inflow of $181 million. This comes as a welcome relief for the Indian startup ecosystem as the previous month saw VC funding dropping to the lowest level for the year till now on a weekly basis. However, this is not a definite sign that capital inflow will move into the upward trajectory in the near future. During this week, there were reasonably sized deals cutting across the segments of renewable energy, AI and deeptech. In the current environment, it is unlikely that there would be any large value transactions by Indian startups. Renewable energy companyGPS Renewables(GPSR) raised Rs 635 crore ($66 million approx.) from PixelSky Capital, Spectrum Impact Family Office, Arya, and Sojitz Corporation. Consumer AI startupEqual AIraised $30 million from Prosus Ventures, Tomales Bay Capital, Think Investments, Valiant Fund, Zubin Mittal of Airtel, Sameer Nigam of PhonePe, and others. Deeptech startupEthereal Machinesraised $28.5 million from Avataar Ventures, Peak XV Partners, and others. Residential community management tech startupMygateraised Rs 225 crore ($23.6 million approx.) from Dharana Capital. EV startupExponent Energyraised Rs 200 crore ($21.1 million approx.) from 360 ONE Asset, TDK Ventures, Hitachi Ventures, Eight Roads Ventures, Lightspeed, 3one4 Capital, AdvantEdge VC, and YourNest. Biotech startupImmuneel Therapeuticsraised Rs 100 crore ($10.4 million approx.) from Singularity AMC, Rainmatter by Zerodha, Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw, Eight Roads Ventures, and F-Prime Capital. Marine robotics startupRekise Marineraised $9.7 million from Accel, NKSquared, Sameer Brij Verma, Sandeep Singhal, Industrial47 and Singularity AMC. Manam Chocolateraised $9 million from Omnivore and Turner Morrison consortium. Quick-commerce startupBazaarNowraised Rs 72 crore ($7.5 million approx.) from Peak XV Partners, Whiteboard Capital and Antler.
