While Sequoia Capital backed 48 start-ups, New Enterprise Associates—the second most prolific venture capital firm—was involved in 44 deals, according to start-up tracker Tracxn.
Bengaluru: Sequoia Capital and New Enterprise Associates were the most prolific venture capital firms last year globally in terms of the number of deals, backing 48 and 44 start-ups, respectively.
The Menlo Park-based venture capital firms were closely followed by Accel Partners (42 deals), Bessemer Venture Partners (24 deals) and Andreessen Horowitz (21 deals), according to Tracxn, a start-up tracker.
Tiger Global Management, which is one of the most prolific investors in the Indian start-up ecosystem, having backed the likes of Flipkart Ltd, Shopclues (Clues Network Pvt. Ltd) and Grofers (Locodel Solutions Pvt. Ltd), ranked eighth in the list of the most prolific venture capital firms in 2015, with 18 deals.
Among the top 15 global investors were Kleiner Perkins Caufield and Byers, Matrix Partners, IDG Capital Partners, Benchmark Capital, Lightspeed Venture Partners and Khosla Ventures, the Tracxn research said. The top five funds—Sequoia Capital, New Enterprise Associates, Accel Partners, Bessemer Venture Partners and Andreessen Horowitz—parked most of their money in consumer Internet start-ups, followed by healthcare and financial technologies.
According to the research, the top 15 venture capital firms struck the maximum number of deals in the consumer segment; $13.12 billion was invested in 255 deals. Other sectors which found high interest from investors were enterprise applications ($2.91 billion across 98 deals), enterprise infrastructure ($3.66 billion across 92 deals), financial technologies ($3.01 billion across 68 deals) and healthcare ($1.43 billion across 48 deals).
Most of the top global investors have also made significant investments in India, especially in the consumer Internet space.
For instance, Sequoia Capital has backed grocery delivery start-up Grofers, besides food technology companies such as TinyOwl Technology Pvt. Ltd and Zomato Media Pvt. Ltd. Accel Partners is one of the early backers of Flipkart and ride hailing service TaxiForSure (Serendipity Infolabs Pvt. Ltd), which was later acquired by Ola (ANI Technologies Pvt. Ltd).
Bessemer Venture Partners has backed the likes of online grocery store BigBasket (Supermarket Grocery Supplies Pvt. Ltd), Snapdeal (Jasper Infotech Pvt. Ltd) and Ola, among others.
According to Tracxn, $7.4 billion was invested in home-grown start-ups last year.
[“source-Livemint”]