New Delhi, Aug 24 : The funding momentum for the startup ecosystem in the country continued with more than $265 million being raised via 16 deals this week.

The biggest fund-raise came with omnichannel jewellery startup Bluestone securing $107.2 million in its pre-IPO round. In the fintech space, Aye Finance raised $25 million loan from Goldman Sachs (India) and lending startup Axio secured $20 million from Amazon Smbhav Venture Fund to drive growth.

The ecommerce sector was the top gainer this week, with $148.7 million raised via four deals.

Livpure, a homegrown water purifier brad, raised Rs 208 crore funding from M&G Investments and nearly Rs 25 crore from Ncubate Capital Partners.

On the other hand, D2C ice cream brand Hangyo secured $25 million, MSMEs-focused fintech startup FlexiLoans bagged $9 million and D2C luggage brand Uppercase secured $9 million.

Thirteen early-stage startups secured funding worth $53.46 million, led by Even and Zoff, among others.

Last week, the domestic startup ecosystem raised more than $395 million in 20 deals, that was a huge 350 per cent jump from the previous week.

Last month, Indian startups raised $1.03 billion as the government abolished angel tax in the Union Budget 2024-25 which was levied on foreign investors. Indian startups raised $1.93 billion in funding in June.

Bengaluru and Delhi-NCR-based startups led the funding with seven deals each.

Meanwhile, Kunal Bahl and Rohit Bansal backed Titan Capital Winners Fund successfully raised its target corpus of Rs 200 crore this week. The fund will invest exclusively in follow-on rounds of breakout companies from its seed portfolio, utilizing high-signal data to make informed investment decisions.

The government has recognised 1,40,803 entities as startups (as of June 30). More than 55 regulatory reforms have been undertaken by the government since 2016 to enhance ease of doing business, ease of raising capital and reduce compliance burden for the startup ecosystem.

/IANS