As anticipated, due to Covid-19, March saw the funding for Indian start-ups take a hit. Investments fell 81.1 per cent to $0.33 billion in March 2020, as compared to $1.73 billion in March 2019, according to data from Tracxn, a firm that tracks investments and financials of private companies and start-ups.

The number of companies that were funded also fell by nearly 50 per cent — only 69 firms were funded this year, as against 136 firms in March last year.

The top-funded sectors included fintech at $146.06 million, life sciences at $ 44.66 million, retail at $43.70 million and enterprise applications at $39.19 million. The consumer sector, which encompasses online and technology-enabled consumer-facing companies in the business-to-consumer (B2C) space, garnered $133.63 million.

On the other hand, sectors such as insurtech, which encompasses platforms and companies that use technology to transform the insurance industry ($0.15 million), travel and hospitality tech (0.99 million), real estate and construction tech ($1.15 million), energy tech ($1.96 million), and media and entertainment ($3 million) were among the least funded sectors in March 2020.

Vivriti Capital, Veritas Finance, Molbio Diagnostics, udaan and SMEcorner were the top five funded companies in March this year, according to data from Tracxn. The most active investors — based on their participation in equity funding rounds in March — included American seed accelerator Y Combinator, AngelList, Sequoia Capital, Venture Highway and Accel.

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