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