According to data collected by the Times of India and Tracxn, Sequoia Capital, Accel Partners and SAIF Partners were the most active venture funds in the year 2014. This is based on the number of tech companies that these venture funds invested in last year.
According to the data, Sequoia Capital ended up investing a whopping $150 million in new and follow-on rounds last year, while SAIF invested approximately $80 million. 2014 also saw an unprecedented rise in the number of digital companies that these venture funds invested in. The numbers invested by these venture funds may not match up to the new money brought in by hedge funds and big shots like SoftBank, nevertheless Venture funds stepped up their early stage activity last year.
| VC Fund | New | $ Million New + Follow-On |
|---|---|---|
| Sequoia | 15 | 150 |
| SAIF | 14 | 80 |
| Matrix | 7 | 70 |
| Helion Ventures | 11 | 60 |
| Norwest Ventures | 4 | 55 |
| Nexus Ventures | 6 | 40-50 |
| Accel Ventures | 12 | 35-40 |
| IDG Ventures | 9 | 25 |
SAIF Partners also upped its game last year by investing in 14 tech companies which included TravelTriangle, Bookmyshow and Toppr. SAIF is one of the earliest internet investors in the country with big names like MakeMyTrip and JustDial in its portfolio. The fund is further looking to do more seed-stage and series A rounds going forward in this year.
The year 2014 also saw heavyweight investors investing more in consumer tech and keeping in line with this, venture funds too disproportionally made investments 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. That continued as we heavily invested in tech last year. In fact, it was the most active year for us. We’ll not only look to put capital in new ventures but will back our existing portfolio companies in 2015,” said Shailendra Singh, MD, Sequoia Capital in a statement to TOI. Sequoia was successful in raising a new $530 million worth Indian-focused fund in 2014. It even made fresh tech investments in OlaCabs and mobile gaming startup Octro, among others.
Accel with over 12 investments ended up making the highest number of tech investments last year. It is a Silicon Valley fund which was one of the earliest investors in ecommerce giant Flipkart. The fund had invested a whopping $1 million in Flipkart back then in 2009.
The last year saw over $4 billion risk capital being invested in mobile and internet companies with ecommerce taking up $3 billion worth investments all alone. All these were growth stage rounds.
While the last year proved to be a great year for venture funds, the same can’t be said for smaller funds like Blume Ventures. The smaller funds found it very difficult to compete with the dollar power of venture funds.
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