Why Indian drone startups are lagging behind in the fund-raising race

Industry players say that investors tend to shy away when the govt is the largest customer for a small company. But that is just the tip of the iceberg

The Indian startup ecosystem has been on a roll–with different estimates suggesting a cumulative fundraise of $36 billion to $40 billion in calendar year 2021. Be it e-commerce, edtech, fintech, crypto or software as a service (SaaS), most of the segments of the technology startup ecosystem have been successful in attracting investor attention.

Why then has the drone start-up segment only managed to collect $15 million by way of investments among themselves in 2021? The 2021 number is still an improvement over the previous years–$7 million in 2020, $3 million in 2019 and $5 million in 2018, according to data