India has moved up to third place worldwide for technology startup funding, behind only the US and the UK and ahead of Germany and France, according to fresh data from market-intelligence platform Tracxn.
Funding cools, ranking rises
Despite the higher global ranking, total capital flowing to Indian tech startups fell 23% year-on-year to $7.7 billion in the first nine months of 2025 (January-September), down from $10.1 billion in the comparable period of 2024 and $8.3 billion in 2023.
Tracxn’s co-founder Neha Singh framed the shift as a sign of a system maturing, pointing to “rising acquisitions, steady IPO activity, and continued unicorn creation” as balanced exit pathways for founders and investors, momentum that has helped India’s ecosystem hold its ground globally.
Deal stages: late-stage leads the pullback
The slowdown was broad-based across stages:
- Seed: $727 million, down 39% year-on-year.
- Early-stage: $2.7 billion, down 10%.
- Late-stage: $4.3 billion, down 27%.
Big cheques were scarcer: rounds of $100 million+ fell to 10 (from 16 last year and 15 in 2023). Yet median round size doubled to $1.5 million, suggesting investors are concentrating their bets even as mega-deals thin out.
Where the money went?
Enterprise applications topped the sector charts with $2.3 billion, followed by retail ($2.0 billion) and transportation & logistics tech ($1.79 billion). Tracxn says these categories are underpinning long-term investor confidence and India’s digital transformation.
Exits, unicorns, and the geography of capital
Exit activity strengthened: 110 acquisitions were recorded in 2025 (Jan–Sep), up 15% from 96 a year earlier, with enterprise applications leading acquisition interest amid demand for cloud and AI solutions.
On the marquee-valuation front, India added four unicorns in 2025, taking the total count to 122. The capital map remains familiar: Bengaluru accounted for 31% of funding, followed by Delhi at 18%.
The signal behind the numbers
Viewed together, 2025’s funding picture looks like a compression at the top and a recalibration underneath: fewer mega-rounds, a higher median cheque, and a tilt toward enterprise-grade software and infrastructure.
The ranking gain to No. 3 globally, owes less to a flood of new money at home and more to India’s resilience and breadth, with steadier exits and a pipeline of scale-ups keeping the ecosystem investable through a tougher cycle.
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