Indian startups raised about $26 million in a week: inside the weakest funding week of 2026

Even the slowest week of 2026 until now had brought Indian startups $66 million. The second week of November did not come close. Three trackers that count deals independently, YourStory, Entrackr and Inc42, all put the week's total somewhere between $25 million and $32 million. YourStory calls it the lowest weekly figure of the year.

A single quiet week does not make a trend. But this one lands at the end of a year that was already running behind 2025, and right after a month in which, as we reported earlier this month, no Indian startup raised a $100 million round. That makes the week worth looking at closely: where the little money went, why the trackers think it dried up, and what was still moving underneath.

Three counts, one direction

The trackers use slightly different windows and rules, so their numbers do not match exactly. They agree on the shape.

YourStory counts $26 million across 11 deals for the week of 7 to 14 November, against $263 million the week before. It says the previous low for 2026 was the last week of May, at $66 million, so this week came in at well under half of the earlier floor.

Entrackr counts 12 startups raising $31.3 million between 9 and 14 November, across two growth stage and 10 early stage deals, five of them undisclosed. That compares with about $258.1 million raised by 28 startups the week before, a fall of nearly 88%. Entrackr puts the average over the past eight weeks at about $194.3 million across 22 deals a week.

Inc42, which counts 9 to 13 November, has nine startups raising $25.2 million, down 90.1% from $255 million, with the number of deals down 55% from 20. Whichever count you use, the week lost close to nine tenths of its money, and in both Inc42's and Entrackr's counts the number of deals fell by more than half.

Where the money went

One deal carried the week. Pune based renewable fuels startup Greenjoules raised Rs 150 crore in a Series B round co-led by Amazon's Smbhav Venture Fund and Climate Pledge Fund, Entrackr reports, with Rainmatter, Singularity's Strategic Autonomy Fund and Blue Ashva Capital also in. Inc42 logs $16 million of that as part of a larger round, which on its own is more than half of the week's total.

The second growth round was in lending. Olyv raised Rs 57.62 crore in an extended Series C led by new investor Nippon India Digital, with existing investor Fundamentum, according to Entrackr.

AI was present but small. Inc42 counts three AI deals worth a combined $8.2 million: Kutlerri.ai's $4 million from Narahari Investments, Froncort.AI's $2.3 million from Google.org, and mistEO's $1.9 million seed round led by MGF-Kavachh with Seafund. Entrackr's list adds Desible.ai's Rs 32 crore round led by Prime Venture Partners and creator platform Rigi's Rs 10 crore from Google. The rest of the week was made up of consumer brands and celebrity cheques: Sachin Tendulkar, KL Rahul and Ajinkya Rahane put undisclosed sums into Recykal, PlayBlue and Ember Cookware.

Why it dried up

The trackers do not fully agree on the reason. YourStory points to a mix of the festive period and fewer deals. Inc42 frames it the other way, saying the post festive cheer did little to lift activity after signs of recovery in the weeks before.

YourStory goes further on the structural causes. It argues that the ecosystem still relies heavily on overseas money, that rising trade tension has curbed that flow, and that the bigger problem is the absence of a credible AI story: in the large VC markets AI startups take the highest share of capital, while India, in its view, has only a handful of credible AI startups. That is YourStory's analysis, not a measured fact, but the week's own numbers are consistent with it. Three AI rounds together came to about $8 million.

The year in numbers

YourStory puts VC funding for the first ten months of 2026 at $10.4 billion, against $12.1 billion for all of 2025, and says the total for this year is unlikely to cross last year's given current trends. Entrackr's count for October alone was about $678 million, and it notes that direct to consumer brands took around $200 million of that, nearly 30%, and 36 of the month's 108 deals.

The people side is shifting too. Anup Gupta, the Nexus Venture Partners partner who backed Turtlemint, Kiwi and Unicommerce, is set to leave the firm in June next year, The Economic Times reports, calling it the latest in a string of senior exits at India's top venture firms. Inc42 puts his tenure at 16 years; ET says nearly 17.

What was still moving

Private rounds were thin, but the pipeline to public markets kept moving. Inc42 notes that Razorpay received SEBI's approval for an IPO expected to raise Rs 5,000 to 6,000 crore at a valuation of around $5 billion, and that MakeMyTrip's India arm got approval for an offer for sale only IPO that could raise over $1 billion.

Fund raising by investors also continued. Norwest closed Norwest 18 at $4 billion, its largest fund, to invest across the US, India and Israel, according to both Inc42 and Entrackr. Entrackr also reports that Canonicus Capital made a Rs 192 crore first close of its Rs 500 crore special situations fund, and that OnEMI Technology Solutions, the parent of Kissht, completed an Rs 832.20 crore preferential issue to 34 investors, including Axis Mutual Fund, 360 ONE and Bandhan Small Cap Fund.

So the money has not left India. It is sitting in new funds, going to late stage companies that are close to listing, and into large preferential share issues, while the early and growth rounds that the weekly trackers count are going quiet.

What to watch

The next two weekly reports will show whether this was a festive season dip, as YourStory partly suggests, or a new floor. Watch the size of AI rounds in particular, since that is the gap YourStory says is holding the market back, and watch whether the new funds raised this month start writing cheques before the year ends. With $10.4 billion counted by YourStory through October against $12.1 billion for 2025, November and December would need about $1.7 billion between them for 2026 to match last year. A week like this one adds almost nothing to that.