Body of youth brought home from Saudi after 3 months; death mystery unsolved

Bengaluru, Jan 15: The Indian startups secured 12.7 billion in funding last year -- a 15% growth compared to 2018 - and Bengaluru startup community topped the list, with securing $5.3 billion across 267 deals, a new report said on Tuesday.

In total, the Indian startups attracted 766 deals in 2019, taking total deal count between 2014-2019 to 5,011, said DataLabs by Inc42 in its annual startup funding report.

Sequoia took the top spot as the most active VC in 2019 with 53 deals, followed by Accel that participated in 38 deals. Blume Ventures, Matrix Partners and Tiger Global were in the top five VCs in 2019.

"The Indian startup economy is entering new decade with over $58 billion in fundraising and 2,984 funded startups between 2014-2019," the findings showed.

With an average of $21 million, the ticket size value of funding increased by 15% in 2019.

Ecommerce and fintech -- with $2.6 billion funding each -- took the top slot with 93 deals and 125 deals, respectively.

"Ecommerce continued to remain at the top by the end of 2019. The growing investor confidence towards sub-sectors such as vertical ecommerce, social commerce and private label businesses is one major factor for ecommerce maintaining its lead," a DataLabs spokesperson said in a statement.

According to the estimates, the funding amount and deal count in 2020 will be around $12.6 billion at a 1% decline from 2019.

"Nevertheless, the investment activity is expected to rise in 2021," said the report.

The data suggests that 2019 had lowest number of startups funded (664) in the last five years, with seed-stage funding deals dropping by 53%, compared to 2016.

With $252 million in funding, seed-stage deal value fell by 44% (compared to 2018) as only 306 seed funding deals were recorded, the report said.

The enterprise tech had a blockbuster year with total funding of $1.15 billion across 114 deals in 2019. The sector recorded a 49% surge in total funding amount, compared to 2018.

The Indian startup economy saw 275 unique VCs participating in funding in 2019, said the report.

Bengaluru,  Jul 22: Karnataka Congress president DK Shivakumar on Tuesday said that the state government should give details of the amount it spent on migrants and labourers during the coronavirus crisis if it is transparent.

"The image of Karnataka has come to a very rotten position. We all know that Karnataka has failed in sorting out the problem. Let them (the state government) tell what has been the amount spent on the labour, migrants, food kits on the health department. We want an account (of the expenditure) if they are so transparent," Shivakumar said.

He said that the state government should have approached the hospitals for treating COVID-19 patients and if any hospital refused, a message should have been given that the government would take it over.

He also accused the state government of corruption.

Bengaluru, Jul 19: A man protested in front of Karnataka Chief Minister BS Yediyurappa's residence on Saturday alleging lack of medical care claimed the life of his one-month-old infant girl, police said on Saturday.

Venkatesh sat with the baby's photograph in front of the Chief Minister's house, saying the girl developed health issues on July 11 and he rushed her to a hospital, but it turned him away, the police said.

He said he had approached about a dozen hospitals and all of them refused to provide the baby any medical care. Eventually, the baby died.

This forced Venkatesh to hold a protest to draw the Chief Minister's attention to the issue, the police said.

The demonstration drew public attention and a few people joined him in the protest, they said.