The western city of Mumbai, home to the country’s biggest stock exchanges and some of its largest business conglomerates, was the base for 14 per cent of the nearly 50,000 startups established in India by the end of 2018, according to a recent KPMG report.
Mumbai, the capital of Maharashtra state, is third behind India’s Silicon Valley Bengaluru (25 per cent of startups) and capital city New Delhi (21 per cent) in the number of startups hosted. E-commerce startups comprise the biggest share of budding companies in Mumbai, followed by fintech—an area of focus for Maharashtra.
As part of its fintech policy, the Maharashtra government in February 2018 set aside a corpus of Rs200 crore (US$28m) to promote 300 startups over the next three years. It has already made a start by shortlisting 13 Mumbai-based firms, including One Wallet, Huepay, and Monitree, for an accelerator programme.