VC investment in India small but steady

Venture Beat — Thu, 22 May 2008 10:39:45 -0700

Venture investment in India had a relatively quiet first quarter — VCs invested $99 million in 16 deals, according to a new report from Dow Jones VentureSource.

That’s an 80 percent drop from the same period last year, but that plummet tells us more about the investment spike in early 2007 than whether the recent quarter was particularly terrible. It’s also a 27 percent drop from the fourth quarter of 2007. (Yeah, last year was a record-breaking time for venture investment in India.)

Interestingly, the amount of deals held relatively steady — it’s the deal size that shrank. That’s pretty much the exact opposite of what happened in China (the other country seen as the standard-bearer in overseas venture growth), where the number of deals fell, but the amount of money per deal grew, causing a 46 percent year-over-year boost. How big is the difference? In India, the median deal size was $4.1 million; in China, it was $10 million. The United States fell in between, with a median size of $7.1 million.

A single company, Mumbai-based ClearTrip Travel Services, accounted for more than one-fourth of all the venture dollars invested, with a $26 million third round.