India’s startup funding landscape remained under pressure in 2025, with total capital deployed declining 8% YoY to around $11 Bn, as per Inc42’s Annual Indian Startup Trends Report, 2025. While the headline number is reflective of a market that is still recalibrating from the peak fund deployment during the 2021–22 cycle, the underlying story is more about a recalibration.

Amid this funding stability, investors continued to favour startups with clear paths to monetisation, repeat demand and disciplined capital deployment, resulting in fewer but more conviction-led bets. In this, fintech as a sector continued to be the preferred destination for capital deployment.

In 2025, fintech remained the largest magnet for startup capital in India. Homegrown fintech startups raised roughly $2.5 Bn across 120 deals during the year, the highest funding haul among all sectors, even as overall funding activity moderated.

While the number of fintech deals declined sharply from 162 in 2024, the absolute capital deployed into the sector remained largely flat in 2025.

When compared against other sectors’ performance in the calendar year, fintech trailed ecommerce in terms of total deal count. Ecommerce recorded the highest deal count in 2025 at 206 transactions, but with significantly lower capital deployed per deal.

Fintech, by comparison, attracted fewer cheques but meaningfully larger ticket sizes, translating into a median ticket size of approximately $20.8 Mn — among the highest across sectors. This reflects a near 75% jump from last year’s median ticket size of $11.9 Mn.

Important to mention that fintech dominated the top end of the funding spectrum. Two of the largest startup raises of 2025 came from fintech: cross-border neobanking platform Zolve raised $251 Mn, while stockbroking major Groww secured $202 Mn in a pre-IPO Series F round........

© Inc42