$8 Bn worth funding in mobile based startups in last 5 years

With mobile phones contributing 40 percent of all e-commerce sales in India in 2015,startups in m-commerce, video streaming, gaming and m-payment segments attracted $8,053 million worth of funding through 394 early stage deals in the last five years, according to the 'Annual Indian Mobile Ecosystem Report', by News Corp VCCircle.

The report highlights startups in these four segments as major contributors to driving mobile data consumption. According to the report, the year 2015 saw a surge in terms of deal volumes to 115 early stage funding deals amounting to $2,857.73 million across the 4 segments. This is against 87 deals amounting to $3,285 million in 2014.

"With a majority of mobile-centric startups still being in the early funding stage, the likelihood of them achieving scale and breaking even in the absence of adopting successful monetization strategies is still low," the report noted.

Startups in M-commerce and mobile payments attracted investment deals of $7,930 million cumulatively, in the last five years.

Startups in the gaming space have garnered 38 early stage funding deals, amounting to $87.35 million since 2011. The segment witnessed an increase of 22 percent in deal volumes and 128 percent in deal value in 2015 as against 2014.

Startups in the field of video streaming also garnered 27 early stage funding deals amounting to $35.24 million. Despite the sector heating up with the influx of over 20 players, deals headed south registering 6 early stage funding deals to the tune of $2.90 million in 2015 as against 7 deals to the tune of $12.51 million in 2014.

Speaking on the report highlights, Nita Kapoor, head - India, New Ventures, News Corp and chief executive officer, News Corp VCCircle, said, "The numbers are suggestive of India being an evolving 'data' story. Growth in data consumption will drive the next wave of growth for this industry."

"While our data shows growth of early stage investments into mobile centric start-ups over the last five years, the challenge now is for them to identify the right monetization model to scale up and break even," Kapoor said.