2025 is almost over so here's a look back on the year for founders and vcs. The startup and VC world was pedal to the metal this year in terms of investing and raising money.
Presenting the 2025 Startup and VC Funding Wrapped for this year.
lets start with finding out who raised the big bucks this year.
Companies that raised the highest amount of funding in 2025
- Swiggy raised $1.2B in a post IPO funding round led by SoftBank Vision Fund 2 and Prosus.
- Manipal group raised $600M in debt funding from KKR & Co Inc.
- Meesho raised $500M in a fresh funding round led by Tiger Global, Think Investments, etc.
- Zepto raised approximately $350M in Series G and H rounds this year
- Innovaccer Inc. raised $275M in a Series F round led by B Capital Group, Banner Health etc.
- Uniphore raised a $260M in a Series F round led by NEA, March Capital Partners etc.
- Zolve raised a $250M in a Series B round led by Creaegis with participation from HSBC, SBI Investment, Accel, Lightspeed etc.
- Porter raised a $200M in a series F round led by Kedaara Capital and Wellington Management.
VCs with the biggest chequebooks in 2025
Here's a list of VCs that wrote the most number of cheques in 2025. Founders better make a note ;)
- Accel did 27 deals
- Inflection Point Ventures did 24 deals
- Venture Catalysts did 20 deals
- Peak XV Partners did 17 deals
- Blume Ventures did 13 deals
Now here are VCs that were involved in rounds with the highest average amount of money (10 deal minimum)
- Peak XV with an average of $47.04M
- Accel with an average of $14.91M
- Blume with an average of $7.14M
- Nexus with an average of $6.89M
- Fireside with an average of $3.75M
A look at VC funding across stages
VCs who hopped on the A-Train the most this year (Top investors involved in Series A rounds)
- Peak XV Partners was involved in 8 Series A rounds
- Accel was involved in 7 Series A rounds
- Inflection Point Ventures was involved in 6 Series A rounds
- Blume Ventures, Elevation Capital, Nexus Venture Partners and RTP Global tied at 5 Series A rounds
- Venture Catalysts and Lightspeed tied at 4 Series A rounds
VCs who took the most amount of seeds bets this year (Top investors leading Seed/Pre-seed rounds)
- Inflection Point Ventures was involved in 16 rounds in this category
- Venture Catalysts was involved in 12 rounds
- Accel was involved in 7 rounds
- Kalaari and Titan Capital are tied at 6 rounds involved
- Unicorn India Ventures, Speciale Invest, Antler, Rainmatter tied at 5 rounds involved
That's tooo many numbers... now lets do some fun stats.
Startups with the biggest investor lineup
Some startups that raised this year had investor lineups that looked more like a wedding guest list.
- Rabitat raised $4.60M from 13 investors including RPSG Capital, DSG Consumer Partners, Capital A, Accurize Syndicate etc.
- Eggoz raised $20M from 10 investors including Gaja Capital, IvyCap Ventures, Rebright Partners, Avaana Capital etc.
- Darwix AI raised $1.5M from 10 investors including Rebalance, IPV, JITO Incubation and Innovation Foundation, Growth Sense, Growth91 etc.
A list of the most "why are you on this list" investors of 2025
- Cricketer MS Dhoni was involved in the ~$12M funding of Healthcare startup, Superhealth
- Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan invested $40M in Darwinbox's recent raise
- Flair Writing (yes the company that makes the Writo Meter pens) was involved in the $4.6M raise of Rabitat
- Export Import bank of India was involved in Tonbo Imaging's $20.59M Series D, pre IPO raise
- Rinku Singh (Cricketer) invested ~$230,000 in BeastLife (the brand owned by Gaurav Taneja, aka Flying Beast)
Most overused word in startup names
Out of startups that raised funding in 2025, the most overused word in their names were
- Energy (used by 13 startups)
- Aerospace (used by 13 startups)
- Finance (used by 9 startups)
- Foods (used by 8 startups)
- Care (used by 7 startups)
very surprising that AI did not make it to the top 5.
You really don't need to be founded in HSR to raise big.
- JQR from Bahadurgarh raised a $25M round led by Venturi Partners
- CureBay from Bhubaneshwar raised a $21M led by Bertelsmann India Investments,Elevar Equity and British International Investment
- GreenLine Mobility Solutions from Surat raised $275M in an equity funding round, out of which $20M came from Nikhil Kamath
- TractorJunction from Alwar, Rajasthan raised $22.6M in a Series A round led by Astanor
- Celebal Tech primarily based out of Jaipur raised $15M in a Series B led by InCred Growth Partners Fund
Timing is key
Here's a look at what time of the year companies raised the most funding in 2025
- November-2025: 116 deals
- April-2025: 101 deals
- October-2025: 99 deals
Here's a look at what time of the year companies raised the least funding in 2025
- March-2025: 45 deals
- August-2025: 70 deals
- December-2025: 81 deals
A look at Private Equity activity in 2025
Private equity was surprisingly big this year with a lot of big ticket deals happening. Here's a look at some of the biggest PE firms and the sum of the dollar amount of deals they were involved in.
- Westbridge Capital was involved in $622M across 5 deals
- KKR & Co Inc. was involved in $600M+ across 2 deals
- Premji Invest was involved in $156M across 3 deals
- British International Investment was involved in $121.4M across 2 deals
- General Atlantic was involved in $115M across 1 deal
Few other interesting tidbits
- Zepto continues to speedrun the Series alphabet
- Food related brands seemed to exceptionally well, prominent brands include Swish, Alienkind, The Whole Truth, Biryani Blues, Curefoods, Salad Days and many more.
- Many prominent, well established startups went out to raise more money, companies include Swiggy, Juspay, Meesho, CoinDCX, Rapido, Porter, Spinny, Furlenco, Zepto, Country Delight etc.
- Around 40 D2C brands raised money at an average of $8.02M
- Around 125 AI focused startups raised money at an average of $14.8M
Closing remarks
This was a fun exercise i did in an hour or so, the data may be incomplete and may have some inaccuracies due to the sources i used but overall it gives a good idea of how the startup and VC world looked like in 2025. Also note that all figures mentioned for vcs and funds are representative of the size of deals they were involved in and not necessarily the amount they invested.
I used this as my primary source of data and referred a bunch of news articles and traxcn pages to cross verify some of the data points. Hope this was an interesting read :)
pss pss you should soubscribe to my blog's mailing list. click here to do so.
PS click here if you wanna read other blogs I've written