The number of deals however fell from 177 to 167, marking the fourth straight year of decline in early-stage deal volumes. Even traditional heavyweights—late stage investors such as South Africa’s Naspers and Chinese internet giant Alibaba—have been looking at more early-stage deals in India through Naspers Ventures and BAce Capital, respectively. Pranav Pai, founding partner of early-stage firm 3one4 Capital, said the rise in early-stage investment reflects a global trend of more capital being allocated to this stage. They tend to attract more investors for larger early rounds," he said. An example of this trend is Freecharge founder Kunal Shah’s second outing—which incentivises credit card payments with reward points—raising $30 million in seed round led by Sequoia Capital last November.

Source: Mint July 02, 2019 18:21 UTC