July 3 (Cointime) - The funding drought is permeating startups across different stages. A total of 325 seed funding deals were struck in H1 2023, a dramatic fall from the 936 in the same period in 2022 and 921 in H1 2021, according to Tracxn’s data. Other early-stage funding rounds, chiefly Series A and Series B, dwindled to 108, compared to 296 and 211 in the equivalent periods in 2022 and 2021, respectively. Late-stage funding also suffered, slumping to 36 deals from 137 and 114 during similar periods the prior years.

The slowdown comes as many late-stage investors, previously prolific backers of Indian startups, have taken a step back. Tiger Global has done just one deal in India this year, according to Tracxn and Crunchbase, whereas SoftBank (which deployed over $3 billion in India in 2021) and Insight Partners (which backed several late-stage startups last year and in 2021) wrote virtually no checks. Instead, sovereign funds, especially from the Middle East region, have financed the vast majority of those deals in India in recent quarters.