Road to success for seed funded startups is rocky

New Delhi Less than one in three startups that attract seed funding manage to raise follow-on funding in the form of a 'Series A' round, a study by Venture Intelligence shows.

Out of the over 2,500 startups that had raised seed funding between 2015 and 2022, only 29 per cent (i.e., 734 companies) managed to raise a Series A round (typically the first round of institutional Venture Capital funding), the study titled 'Series A Landscape Report' found.

However, once a startup attracts a Series A round, its success ratio in raising subsequent rounds of capital improves quite significantly. For instance, 50 per cent of the companies that raised a Series A during the study period succeeded in raising a Series B round. And, of the startups that attracted a Series B round, 62 per cent succeeded in obtaining a Series C round.

Of the Series C funded companies, 70 per cent managed to raise rounds that were Series D and beyond, the study found. The number of companies raising a Series A round grew at a CAGR of 8 per cent in the five year period from 2017 to 2022. Despite the onset of a funding slowdown in 2022, the number of Series A investments during the year (289) was up 7 per cent compared to 2021 (which saw 269 investments) and 30 per cent above the average of 224 deals recorded in the recent seven years.