India’s seed-and early-stage startups are raising almost twice as much per round as they did a year ago, with venture firms frontloading capital for more mature products and business models that require upfront spending, particularly in artificial intelligence, deeptech, infrastructure and healthtech.
According to data collected from Tracxn’s India Tech H1 2026 report, seed and early-stage startups raised a combined $3.34 billion across 608 rounds in the first half of 2026, compared with $2.96 billion across 1,055 rounds a year earlier. That pushed the average cheque size across these two buckets to about $5.5 million, from $2.8 million.
Early-stage led the shift, with funding rising to $2.8 billion from $2.2 billion even as the round count fell to 188 from 258. At seed-stage, total capital fell to $541 million from $758 million, but number of rounds dropped much faster, to 420 from 797, lifting the average cheque to about $1.3 million from less than $1 million.
