A report by news corp VCCircle has released its ‘Annual Indian Mobile Ecosystem Report’ and the data shows growth of early stage investments into mobile-centric startups over the last five years, the challenge, however, is for them to identify the right monetization model to scale up and break even in the near future.
The segment-wise analysis identifies the following investment interest patterns in the ecosystem:
M-commerce: Startups in M-Commerce category received 263 early stage funding deals amounting to $7,479.64 million. An increase of 42% in deal volumes in 2015.
Payments/Wallets: Startups in Payments/wallets segment received 66 early stage funding deals amounting to $450.90mn. The deal volume saw a surge of 21% as the deal value rose from $124.48mn in 2014 to $184.16mn in 2015.
Gaming: Startups in the gaming space have bagged 38 early stage funding deals amounting to $87.35mn since 2011. The segment witnessed an increase of 22% in deal volumes and 128% in deal value in 2015 as compared to 2014.
Video Streaming: Startups in the field of Video Streaming picked 27 early stage funding deals amounting to $35.24mn.
While m-commerce, video streaming, gaming and online payments are identified as major contributors to driving mobile data consumption, start-ups in these segments have attracted $8,053mn worth of funding through 394 early stage funding deals in the last five years.
Despite the year 2015 seeing a surge in terms of deal volumes to 115 early stage funding deals that amounted to $2,857.73mn across the four segments, a majority the mobile-centric startups are still in the early funding stage. The e-startup world in the country has seen much to the peril of a traditional set-up. However, the transition is still on, and the new ecosystem is still in its nascent stages.
