Bengaluru, Nov 20 (KNN) Bengaluru ranks first with 1,783 women-led startups in the country, according to a data by Tracxn.

Bengaluru is followed by Mumbai and Delhi at 1,480 and 1,195 respectively. Kolkata, and Ahmedabad, took the eighth, ninth and tenth spots, with 324, 184 and 181 women-led startups.

India’s startup ecosystem has added more firepower becoming the third-largest hub globally after the US and China. India has more than 61,400 startups.

Bengaluru has been one of the top startup ecosystems in India that has catalysed risk-taking among entrepreneurs with a conducive policy framework. But the gender divide is still very stark. A slew of initiatives from incubation programmes, grants and fellowships offered to women-founded startups are trying to address the gender gap, but it requires a giant leap.

Karnataka, for instance, is the first state in the country to provide grant-in-aid of Rs 50 lakh to encourage innovators who need early-stage funding to startups without taking equity in return. This programme has put the spotlight on women entrepreneurs resulting in 30 per cent  winners being women founders.

Tracxn counts Zomato, Byju’s, Ofbusiness, Upstox, Lenskart and Open among the top 10 women-led startups in the country. The funding landscape for women-led companies showed a significant surge in the number of rounds, rising from 171 in 2014 to 460 in 2022.

However, there was a sharp decline in 2023, with the number of rounds dropping to 185. The funding into women-led startups has decreased from 183 startups in 2014 to a mere seven this year.

The number of women-led unicorns from 2008 to 2018 was 14, the data showed.

(KNN Bureau)