After the gold rush, pop goes the unicorn bubble

2015 began with unprecedented fund flows & saw the creation of 4,000 new businesses, but the year ended on a cautious note.2015 began with unprecedented fund flows & saw the creation of 4,000 new businesses, but the year ended on a cautious note. The year started from where we'd left off in 2014 as access to capi tal continued to come easy for high-flying consumer technology startups. Back-to-back financing rounds became commonplace for fast-growing ventures awash in cash.The first six months were profusely optimistic, if anything. Companies in the so-called food-tech category as well the ones providing hyperlocal, and home and local services were on a roll. All told, at the end of 2015 more than $6 billion was raised by venture capital-backed entities across 7,300 funding rounds. Capital infused growth, scale & size Deal-making shot up at a frenetic pace in the first half of the year as young founders in off-the-chart sectors closed rounds in a matter of days. The total number of funded startups this year stood at 764 compared to 263 in 2014, according to Tracxn, which collects data on private companies. The floodgates opened up for seed and series A rounds as valuations zoomed for these yet-to-be-proven business models. Everyone made a dash for growth, scale and size. New York-based investment fund Tiger Global, arguably the most prolific investor in India's digital economy, unleashed a spray-and-pray strategy , taking dozens of early bets on startups like InShorts, Roposo, LocalOye and Grofers, among others. Tiger's early wagers stirred the pure-play venture capital funds to up their game, resulting in a rush of deal-making activity. By August, as many as 85 early-stage startups had raised series A capital, up from 50 last year, Tracxn's data says. But this did not bode well for many companies as signs of a squeeze in follow-on rounds started to surface a few months later.