Amid Layoffs, Indian Startups Register Solid Start To 2024 By Raising Rs 6000 Crore In January

With big companies handing pink slips to thousands of employees to remain afloat and sustainable, budding Indian entrepreneurs are achieving heights with their new startups.

Corporates might not have had a phenomenal kickstart to this year, startups have already hit it out of the park. In January alone, according to TheKredible¡¯s data, there were 70 early-stage deals with a total value of $314.4 million(Rs 2,612.17 Crores), and 21 growth-stage deals worth $418.3 million(Rs 3,510.98 Crores). There were 16 undisclosed rounds.

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However, as per the previous years¡¯ records, this is a significant decrease. The last month of 2023 i.e. December recorded 1.7 billion dollars of funding.

The first month¡¯s figure is also the lowest funding amount for January when compared to the last three years, reports Entrackr. Notably, no startup managed to secure funding above $100 million in January.

Vivifi, a fintech startup, received the most funding in January, totalling $75 million. AiDash, wow! Momo, Impact Analytics, and BluSmart were among the five most funded companies last month.

Three companies in the growth stage, OneCard, Infra.Market, and Yulu, have raised debt funding, as per the data.

Krutrim SI Designs, led by Bhavish Aggarwal, has announced $50 million in funding, making it the fastest unicorn in the Indian startup ecosystem.

International Battery Finance and three fintech startups - StockGro, FinAGG, and Ecofy - made the top five list. StockGro raised the most debt last month, the report noted.

Layoffs continued to stalk startups, with more than 600 layoffs across three companies.

Online food delivery platform Swiggy led the way with 350 layoffs, followed by Cult.fit and InMobi. Flipkart, an e-commerce marketplace, was also in the news for firing over 1,000 employees.

Here's a list of companies that are continuing to offboard employees in 2024 - Read it here.

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In addition to layoffs, several top-level employees left Indian startups. Udaan alone saw two departures, including CFO Aditya Pande and FMCG business head Vinay Shrivastava.

The CEOs of Indus Appstore and KnowledgeHut, both owned by PhonePe, and the co-founders of DealShare and Fashinza have left.

Besides layoffs, cricket non-fungible token (NFT) platform Rario and ByteDance's Resso announced to shut down operations.

(With inputs from IANS)