Startup Funding Report shows Indian startups raised $188.49 million this week across 17 deals, comprising 2 growth-stage rounds, 12 early-stage deals and 3 undisclosed rounds. The latest week also saw 2 key appointments, 1 fund launch and 1 merger and acquisition, marking a sharp rebound in funding activity compared to the previous week.

Key Highlights

• Startup Funding Report shows Indian startups raised $188.49 million across 17 deals, led by Ultraviolette's $85 million round.
• Bengaluru led the funding charts with 8 deals, while AI topped sector-wise activity with four deals.

Weekly Funding Trend

Growth-Stage Deals Total $162 Million

Growth-stage startups raised $162 million across just two deals this week. Electric mobility startup Ultraviolette secured $85 million in a round led by Yali Capital and TDK Ventures, with participation from Walden International chairman Lip-Bu Tan and existing investors. Enterprise AI startup Ema raised $77 million in a Series B round led by Creaegis. Ema was founded by Surojit Chatterjee, a former executive at Google and Coinbase.

Early-Stage Startups Raise $26.49 Million

Early-stage startups collectively raised $26.49 million across 12 deals during the week. Electric commercial mobility startup Drivn's Indian entity raised Rs 45 crore ($4.7 million) in a seed round led by Avaana Capital. AI-powered health coaching platform Disha, formerly Curelink, secured Rs 43.88 crore in a Series A round led by General Catalyst, with participation from existing investor Elevation Capital.

Medicine quick-commerce platform Rio Health raised Rs 43.08 crore ($4.5 million) in a pre-Series A round led by Version One Ventures, with participation from Xeed Ventures, Good Capital and Amplify Partners. Proactive AI startup Sol raised $4 million from General Catalyst, Nexus Venture Partners and others.

Other funded startups included fintech and brokerage startup Definedge, lab-grown diamond jewellery startup ONYA, healthtech startup Betterhood, high-protein frozen food brand Protein Pantry and four others. On-demand convenience platform TimBuckDo, primary healthcare infrastructure company MyRx and carry-first streetwear brand Indian Walker also raised funding this week, though the amounts remained undisclosed.

City and Sector-Wise Funding Trends

Bengaluru again led the funding charts with 8 startup deals during the week, followed by Delhi-NCR with 6 deals. Pune, Goa and Hyderabad also recorded funding activity.

AI startups led the sectors with four deals, followed by healthtech and e-commerce startups with three deals each. Mobility, quick commerce, fintech, foodtech, lifestyle and HR tech sectors also saw funding activity. In terms of funding stages, seed rounds led the week with 6 deals, followed by pre-Series A and pre-seed rounds with four and three deals respectively, while Series E, Series B, Series A and angel funding each recorded one deal.

Weekly Funding Trend Shows Strong Rebound

On a week-on-week basis, startup funding jumped over 3X to $188.49 million, compared to $61.8 million raised the previous week. The average weekly funding over the past eight weeks stood at around $232.88 million across 21 deals, indicating this week's total remained below the recent average despite the sharp sequential rise.

Key Hires

Only two key hirings were recorded this week. Digital lending platform Olyv appointed Ravi Sharma as CFO, bringing over 17 years of experience in financial services, having previously served as CFO at Finova Capital. Functional medicine company iThrive appointed Saloni Kulkarni, its former Head of Client Services, to its Board of Directors.

Mergers and Acquisitions

Private equity firm Samara Capital acquired stakes in Associated Road Carriers (ARC) and Calyx Container Terminals to build an integrated logistics platform.

Also Read: Startup Funding Report: 17 Firms Raise $61.8 Mn in the Latest Week

Fund Launches

Early-stage VC firm Lavni Ventures closed its second deep-tech impact fund at its Rs 200 crore ($21 million) target corpus, with an additional Rs 100 crore green-shoe option. The fund will back Indian deep-tech startups building scalable solutions across health and climate sectors.

Major News and Developments This Week

NSE Market Debut has propelled it into the league of India’s most valuable companies, with the exchange valued at Rs 4.45 trillion after listing at Rs 1,800 on the BSE - a 0.84% premium over its IPO price of Rs 1,785. The listing follows NSE's Rs 22,561 crore IPO, which was subscribed 5.71 times, with bids for 50.58 crore shares against 8.86 crore shares on offer. The issue was entirely an offer for sale, with no proceeds going to NSE.

The shares of its parent company PB Fintech, also known as Policybazaar, fell more than 30% on Thursday after the insurance regulator IRDAI announced measures to reduce commission cut and changes in insurance distribution guidelines. The proposed changes will apply to life insurance, health insurance, general insurance, and tougher limits on expenses and more transparency in insurance sales.

Mastercard sold off its entire stake in Pine Labs on Tuesday at Rs 933.5 crore in a bulk deal, with ICICI Prudential Life Insurance, Societe Generale and Citigroup Global Markets Singapore being the prime buyers.

The used-car retailing firm Spinny has filed its draft IPO papers with SEBI to sell up Rs 2,500-3,000 crore through a fresh issue and offer-for-sale, with an aim to list in 2027. In partnership with SoftBank-backed AceVector, the parent of online platforms Snapdeal and Unicommerce, the company has submitted its RHP with SEBI for an IPO of Rs 287 crore fresh issue and OFS up to 4.12 crore shares after turning into free cash flow positive in FY26.

Aquaculture start-up Aquapulse, which is serving more than 7,000 shrimp farmers in 20,000 hectares across Odisha and West Bengal, plans to grow farmer base to 10,000 and shrimp procurement to 5,000 metric tonnes in a year, with the aim to expand its footprint to Andhra Pradesh.

New Launches and Partnerships

Together, Nykaa and BOLD, a corporate venture capital arm of L'Oréal, will also invest in some of the promising beauty and personal care start-ups in India, taking minority stakes in the emerging brands and giving the founders the operational and creative control.

Pine Labs revealed a strategic investment to roll out 10 lakh Soundboxes across India to augment the digital payments ecosystem and increase the use of UPI. The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has granted Samvriddhi Inclusive Growth Network (SIGN), a subsidiary of MOS Utility, in-principle approval to launch its online payment aggregator service for small businesses in the underserved and rural areas.

In this regard, SRM University AP, in association with APSCHE established the UNITES Global Innovation Society to gather scientists, academia, industry, government and young researchers to help solve societal problems by collaborative research and innovation.