India’s Most Active Tech Venture Capital Firms

With a billion dollar tech scene, and Flipkart recently raising a $1B round of financing, 2014 could be a record year for tech in India. With all of this hype, we wanted to dive into India’s most active tech VCs overall and across multiple stages.

Of all VCs (Super Angel, VC, Corporate Venture Group) Blume Ventures was the most active in terms of unique companies invested in, with over 40 tech companies receiving funding since 2009. Accel Partners and Sequoia Capital India rounded out the top 3.

For point of reference, Blume Ventures is a Mumbai-based fund that provides seed funding to tech companies, in the form of $50-300k investments. Accel’s India tech investments are largely focused on the early-stage, however the company did participate in Flipkart and Myntra’s Series D rounds in 2012. Conversely, Sequoia Capital India had a more even split of early and mid to late-stage investments including participation in a $41.8M July 2014 Series C financing for ANI Technologies, a marketplace for cabs and car rental services.

Foreign VCs Dominate Early-Stage

Blume Ventures and Accel Partners also topped the most active early-stage tech VCs in India with investments in over 25 India-based companies each. 500 Startups was third with seed investments in a variety of Internet and Mobile companies including SocialCops, Intap Labs, and Quest. Only half of the top early-stage tech VCs in India are local highlighting foreign investor interest in the world’s 2nd most populous nation as well as the relatively small size of the local investment landscape. By way of comparison, the UK has 9 of 10 most active early-stage tech investors based locally.

Intel Capital Leads Mid-Stage

Nexus Venture Partners, Intel Capital, Accel Partners, and Kalaari Capital led all investors as the most active Tech VCs in India at the mid-stage since 2009. Some of Intel’s notable investments include Yatra Online, Fashionandyou.com, as well as Vizury Interactive.

Nexus Venture Partners, an early to mid-stage investor with offices in Silicon Valley and India, had notable mid-stage investments including participation in Snapdeal’s $40M Series B in 2011 alongside Bessemer Venture Partners and Kalaari Capital. Snapdeal has gone on to raise an additional $358.7M, including a recent $100M Series E which valued them at $1B.

Notably, the most active mid-stage VCs featured three foreign VC firms’ India operations, as US-based VCs such as Sequoia Capital, Matrix Partners, and IDG Ventures have opened up satellite operations to invest abroad.

For further insight into India’s tech scene check out this post detailing India’s tech funding environment.

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photo credit: Deepak Gupta // Flickr