As for money invested, Sequoia put around $150 million in new and follow-on rounds, while SAIF Partners deployed approximately $80 million amid an unprecedented investor appetite for digital companies. While these numbers may look feeble compared to the new money brought in by hedge funds and biggies like SoftBank and Tiger Global, VCs stepped up early-stage activity in a big way last year.
Just as the heavyweight investors titled towards consumer tech, venture funds too disproportionately ploughed capital into consumer-facing mobile and internet startups.
"Last year was heavily skewed towards consumer tech; we spotted this trend in the middle of 2013 when we made investments in Truecaller, Zomato, Cardekho. In fact, it was the most active year for us. We'll not only look to put capital in new ventures but will continue to back our existing portfolio companies in 2015," said Shailendra Singh, MD, Sequoia Capital India. Sequoia raised a new $530 million India-focused fund last year and made fresh tech investments like mobile gaming startup Octro and OlaCabs, among others.
SAIF, one of the earliest internet investors in India with JustDial and MakeMyTrip in its portfolio, upped the ante last year, having made 14 tech investments, including Bookmyshow, Toppr and TravelTriangle. Mukul Singhal of SAIF said the fund will look to do more seed-stage and series A rounds going forward.
While VCs made aggressive bids for seed funding, smaller funds like Blume Ventures, which invested in eight new startups last year, found it tough to compete with their dollar power. "It's worrisome but we'll have to fight this out. We'll look to change some of our strategies and take fewer bets and win on the plank of being a good seed investor," said Karthik Reddy, co-founder and managing partner of Blume, which is in the midst of raising Rs 350 crore as its second fund.
What would be critical this year is how VCs address the issue of exits, which have been extremely sparse in India. "This has been largely an outcome of how long it took for internet businesses to reach some critical mass. It's changing fast, thanks to a new generation of tech entrepreneurs obsessed with providing a great product experience and generous capital flow to grab market share quickly. Over the next couple years, you will see more companies getting to $50-100 million, leading to faster exits," said Prashant Prakash, partner at Accel India. A Silicon Valley fund, Accel is one of the earliest investors in Flipkart, having put $1 million in 2009. It made 12 new investments in tech startups last year, among the highest in the industry.
In all, over $4 billion in risk capital was invested in internet and mobile companies in 2014 with e-commerce alone guzzling up $3 billion. But these were all growth-stage rounds.
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/followceleb.cms?alias=Sequoia Capital,SAIF Partners,Olacabs,silicon valley,Accel Partners
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