Pune: Startups in Pune received funding of 1.5 billion dollars in eight years from 2014 to 2021 spanning 144 deals.
The Centre for Innovation Incubation and Enterprise (CIIE) at the Savitribai Phule Pune University mapped the investment and progress in these startups in a study titled ‘Investor sentiments and emergence of Tier II city – Pune as a startup destination’.
The report, jointly prepared by city-based Posiview Ventures, was released on Friday at the university. The study aimed at determining the number of deals in Pune in the 2014-21 period and establish a relationship with impact of critical factors on investment deals.
The average deal size rose just 1.5 times from 7.83 million dollars in 2014 to 10.75 million dollars in 2021, but the amount of investment has gone up from 15.7 million dollars to 1.5 billion dollars in 2021. Investor sentiment was high in the pandemic, especially in the second half of the year.
The report cited that startup funding that was confined to Bengaluru, Mumbai and Delhi/NCR has spread to eight cities including Hyderabad, Chennai, Pune, Jaipur and Ahmedabad.
Head of CIIE, Apoorva Palkar, said that Pune has its own share of unicorns namely Firstcry, Druva, Icertis and Mindtickle. “It is evident that India needs more than three cities to handle growth, income generation, employment generation and urbanization,” she added.
Palkar said that the newly added tier II cities offered a huge potential for growth and opportunity that is untapped. “The year of the pandemic saw the sentiments of the investors at a high especially in the second half of the year. The focus of this report is to understand how Pune is emerging as a startup destination with sustained interest of the investors both from within the country and outside.”
Director general of the Mahratta Chamber of Commerce, Industries and Agriculture, Prashant Girbane said, “As we got into the pandemic that compelled social distancing, digital connect rose even more, increasing investments in startups enabled by digital technologies. The pandemic brought forward digital adoption, which has become a new normal. The startups’ activities all over the country catapulted last year, and that’s also seen in Pune, where more than one-third of investment over the past eight years happened in just one year.”
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