Startups raise $3.6 billion during H1 2018

Top five sectors of the startup ecosystem including consumer, retail and fin-tech collectively raised around $3.6 billion in venture capital funding during the first half of the calendar year 2018. This is significantly lower than the $5 billion these sectors raised during the same period last year.

The total funding was led by investments across enterprise applications and health-tech besides, consumer, retail, according to available data.

Prominent deals during the period included back-to-back funds raised by Bengaluru-based food-tech firm Swiggy.

Earlier this month, Swiggy announced that it had raised $210 million in a funding round led by existing investor Naspers Ltd and new investor DST Global. This was barely three months after the company announced it raised $100 million from Naspers and  Meituan-Dianping.

Besides Naspers, investors such as Alibaba and SoftBank were active during the period.

Chinese e-commerce giant, Alibaba participated in a funding round of grocery delivery firm BigBasket, while Softbank on the other hand led the $200 million funding round of  PolicyBazaar.

Data shared by Tracxn excludes debt and grants given to startups.