StartupCentral

In a pattern that is uncomfortably reminiscent of the 1999-2000 dotcom era, venture capital investors parked $67.17 million in 12 Internet companies during the first quarter of 2011. This represented 63.15 per cent of the total value of deals that were reported/disclosed by investors during the quarter. E-commerce startups topped the charts accounting for 9 deals out of the 12 Internet deals during the quarter (see table 3).

In terms of stage of investment, investors favoured Series B deals which accounted for $58.3 million of the total invested. The top dealmaker in terms of number of deals was Mumbai-based Nexus Venture Partners which closed four deals – Sohanlal Commodity, Bigshoebazaar, SnapDeal and Komli Media.

The highest funded company was Komli Media, which received $15 million.

Total Investment $88.67 million

Total Deals 19

1. Investments by Sector

2. Investments by Stage

3. Internet Investments

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The first quarter venture capital investment numbers by US investors are out from the MoneyTree report compiled by PricewaterhouseCoopers and NVCA, based on data from Thomson Reuters. Venture capitalists invested $5.9 billion across 736 deals. This represents a 15.6 per cent growth from the $5.1 billion invested in the first three months of 2010 across 787 deals.

Some highlights from the report:

• Software received the highest funding at $1.1 billion
• Biotech came in third raising $784 million
• Cleantech saw a 26 per cent growth in investments over the December 201o quarter at $1 billion
• Series A investments increased 12 per cent over the December quarter raising $987 million across 221 deals

NVCA also earlier released the first quarter numbers for venture capital fundraising and exits. A total of 36 funds raised $7 billion which represents a 74 per cent growth over the first quarter of 2010. This included 25 follow-on funds and 11 new ones. The big three fund raisers were the $1.6 billion Bessemer Venture Partners VIII fund, the $1.3 billion Sequoia Capital 2010 LP and the $1.2 billion JP Morgan Digital Growth Fund LP. This marks the return of billion dollar funds after a slow fundraising phase in the last couple of years.

On the exits front, 14 venture capital-backed IPOs valued at $1.4 billion entered the market in the first quarter. 109 venture capital-backed M&A deals were reported of which 45 had an aggregate deal value of $5.9 billion. The NVCA thinks that a 20-30 per cent increase in US venture capital-backed firms going public this year is a reasonable goal.

The first quarter performance reports can be downloaded from the NVCA website.

Image Courtesy: Danilo Rizzuti/Free Digital Photos.net

Venture capitalists invested over $34 million in March across six announced deals. There was one reported exit — Reliance Venture Asset Management and Mumbai Angels sold their respective stakes in Dhama Apparel Innovations to unnamed investors.

Investments