Venture funds invest $7.9 billion in Indian startups
Fintech firms continued to be a big bet for VC investors in India throughout the year, in addition to marketplace platforms and ride hailing.
MUMBAI: The total investment made by venture capital investors in the Indian startups stood at $7.9 billion in 2018, the third highest tally of the decade.
A report released by global audit firm KPMG said that the deal sizes in India grew considerably last year, a sign of increasing maturation of the India VC market.
According to the report, the VC investment in India gained strength in 2018 with a number of notable investments in Q4 2018 including Swiggy’s billion dollar raise in December and restaurant search and rating platform Zomato’s $360 million raise in October.
Fintech firms continued to be a big bet for VC investors in India throughout the year, in addition to marketplace platforms and ride hailing.
“Deal size grew considerably in the reporting year, which is a sign of the increasing maturation of the VC market here. Fintech continued to be a big bet throughout the year, apart from marketplace platforms and ride-hailing apps,” the report said.
After experiencing no new unicorns in 2017, India saw four new unicorns emerge during 2018. The new unicorns reflected the growing diversity of India’s startup ecosystem with each unicorn representing a different industries — (Byju (edtech), Policy Bazaar (fintech), Swiggy (food delivery) and Oyo (hospitality).
Heading into Q1 2019, the report noted that the VC investments in these industries is expected to continue to grow. There will also likely be an inc-rease in a number of niche innovation areas such as digital platforms to facilitate used cars sales.
“India is the fastest growing large economy in the world, so anything with a consumer story is very attractive to investors today. We’re seeing a lot of action in consumer solutions — in addition to industrial, automotive and healthcare. The outlook is very positive going forward,” said Nitish Poddar, partner and national leader, private equity, KPMG, India.
The report highlighted venture capital investors growing interest in artificial intelligence and machine learning throughout 2018 with VC investors across Asia drawn by a variety of solutions applicable across multiple industries. Facial recognition was a particularly hot technology of interest in Asia in addition to motion detection and natural language processing.