According to the 2015 released report “Startup India – Momentous Rise of the Indian Startup Ecosystem” by The National Association of Software and Services Companies (NASSCOM) India is the youngest startup nation worldwide with 72% of all Indian entrepreneurs being under 35 years of age. India is globally the 5th largest startup ecosystem with a total number of 4200 startups and an increase of 40% compared to 2014. The number of accelerators increased about 40% as well, to the number of 114. The report also expected, that by the end of 2015 startups in India would have received about $5 billion worth of VC funds, including government initiatives. In January 2016 India’s government released its “Startup Action Plan 2016”, with several initiatives for Indian startups in order to easing up various regulatory, legal and financial hurdles, which are challenging the entrepreneurship in India.
Further backing for startups is provided by enablers like NASSCOM or iSpirt where incubators, accelerators, angel investors, technology corporations and many more key structures and figures of the ecosystem are brought together and being connected. As an example for those enablers in motion is the Nasscom Product Conclave, one of the largest tech events in Bangalore.
Bangalore with 28% of all startups (2014) is the biggest startup hub in India, followed by Delhi and Mumbai. The Compass Report 2015 “Global Startup Ecosystem Ranking“ ranked Bangalore on place 15, one before Sydney and with rank 6 in funding: USD $2.25 billion in 2014.
According to a study by the Indian entrepreneur platform yourstory, the ecommerce sector received the largest funding in 2014 in India with $3.23 billion, followed by consumer internet, mobile app and services. One of the most famous and successful startups from Bangalore is for example Flipkart, founded in 2007, now India’s leading e-commerce marketplace and expanding to other Southeast Asian countries as well. Another one is ZipDial, a analytics and marketing platform founded in 2010 and acquired by Twitter in 2015. Other big players, such as Facebook or Yahoo acquired startups from Bangalore as well, such as Little Eye Labs, a tool provider for mobile app development or Bookpad, a solution provider for digital content.