India has 8,000 startups led by women with $23 bn in funding: Report

NEW DELHI: India is now home to more than 8,000 startups that have women founders with a cumulative funding of nearly $23 billion till now, a report showed on Thursday.

Women entrepreneurs' share of startups in the Indian tech industry exceeds 18 per cent, and among funded companies, the share is more than 14 per cent, according to the report by Tracxn, a leading market intelligence platform.

Women-led startups represent a significant 14.8 per cent share of the overall Indian tech funding pie at nearly $155 billion.

The Delhi-NCR region takes the lead in terms of the number of women-led startups formed till now, followed by Bengaluru and Mumbai.

More than 2,000 startups led by women have received funding till now, leaving around 6,000 unfunded companies, of which 590 have revenue of more than $30,000, the findings showed.

The share of funding raised by women-led startups in the country has risen in the past decade, accounting for more than 15 per cent of the overall startup funding in India from 2020 till 2022.

The first two months of 2024 in this space have witnessed $100 million in funding.

There are 2,300 funded women-led startups, of which 13.4 per cent have progressed to the Series A stage and 3 per cent have gone on to the Series C stage or beyond.

The Indian tech startup ecosystem ranks second after the US, in terms of funding raised by companies with women founders.

The B2C e-commerce space takes the lead with 3,434 companies, followed by internet-first brands with 1,355 companies and software-as-a-service with 1,181.

LetsVenture, Wellfound and Venture Catalysts are the most active investors in this space, said the report.