Start-up funding slows down in 2019 after a two-fold surge previous year

Major deals include $586 million by Tencent and others in Udaan this August, followed by $413 million by SoftBank Corp, Carlyle and Fosun Group in Delhivery

After recording a surge of over 100 per cent in start-up funding in 2018, the year 2019 ended with a mere two per cent growth in value terms, even as the number of deals dropped.

According to Venture Intelligence data, venture capital investments in India stood at $8.9 billion across 656 deals in 2019 as compared to $8.7 billion in 2018 across 664 deals. The 2018 figure was higher by 102 per cent compared to 2017, when VC firms pumped in $4.3 billion across 623 deals.

The term venture capital embraces all investments from seed capital to Series-F funding in companies less than ten years old.
 

The IT & ITeS sector continues to drive investments, followed by BFSI, Logistics, travel and transport, and health care. Sequoia remains the most active VC investor, followed by Accel, Tiger Global (which stepped up investments big time from eight deals in 2018 to 27 deals in 2019), Blume Ventures and Matrix.

 

Major deals include the $586 million investment by Tencent, GGV Capital, Altimeter Capital, Hillhouse Capital, DST Global, Lightspeed Ventures, and others in Udaan in August, followed by $413 million by SoftBank Corp, Carlyle, Fosun Group in Delhivery. Soft Bank invested another $650 million in two companies -- $400 million in FirstCry and and $250 million in Ola Electric. It also participated in the $220 million funding of Grofers along with Tiger Global, Sequoia Capital India and KTB Ventures.

Among cities, Bengaluru continues to top the table, followed by NCR Delhi, Mumbai, Pune, Chennai and Hyderabad.