Ola Cabs, Instacart, Airbnb accounted for 74% of funding in on-demand start-ups in Q1

The on-demand sector raised approximately $1.6 billion over 50 deals in Q1 2017.

A person using an Ola Cabs app. Photo: Ola Cabs official website

On demand category of start-ups have continued to face strong headwinds in terms of investment in Q1 2017. However, Instacart, Ola Cabs and Airbnb were the only start-ups in this category to receive large funding recently. The top three deals of Q1’17 to Instacart, Airbnb, and Ola Cabs accounted for 74% of total dollar funding for the quarter, according to a CB Insights report.

While Instacart raised $400 million as part of a Series D round in March 2017 from investors such as Sequoia Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, Khosla Ventures and Y Combinator, Ola Cabs raised $330 in a Series E round of funding from Softbank. Airbnb raised $448 million in Series E+ round of funding from China Investment Corporation.

Besides these three companies, the on-demand segment has been seeing poor investment. The on-demand sector raised approximately $1.6 billion over 50 deals in Q1 2017, which amounted to the lowest quarter in both funding and deal terms since Q1 2014.

In comparison, less than a year ago, on-demand startups raised $6.6 billion over 72 deals. That’s a far cry from Q3 2015, when the space raised $9.1 billion across 120 deals, at the height of investor interest into on-demand startups.

“Taking a look at on-demand global deal share by quarter, we can see a general decline of seed and angel deals to the space, decreasing from 49% of all deals in Q1’16 to only 38% of deals in Q1’17. That points to less new entrants entering the space as startups die, and some spaces, like food delivery, see consolidation,” said the report.

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