India’s VC investment sees second-highest quarter on record

August 21, 2008 | Anthony Ha | Comments |

Venture capital investment in India grew impressively during the second quarter of 2008. Between April and June, VCs invested a total of $238 million in 17 deals, up 120 percent from the $108 million invested during the same period last year, according to Dow Jones VentureSource. That makes it the second-highest quarter in VentureSource’s records.

The biggest sector was advertising/marketing, which received $89 million. A lot of that money went to a single deal — a $70 million second round for Laqshya Media of Mumbai. (Downtown Mumbai is pictured above.) Jessica Canning, VentureSource’s global research director, says in the report summary that the Laqshya deal taps into two trends — the increasing interest in advertising in India, and a growing number of second round deals. (During Q2, $161 million was invested in second rounds, more than in all of 2007.)

It’s interesting to see venture investment increase so dramatically, more than doubling the money invested during a relatively slow Q1. The biggest industry was business and financial services (which includes advertising), which received a total of $131 million, followed by information technology, which fell to $33 million from $73 million during the same period last year.

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About the Author, Anthony Ha

Anthony is VentureBeat's assistant editor, as well as its reporter on enterprise technology, cloud computing, and tech policy. Before joining VentureBeat in 2008, Anthony worked at the Hollister Free Lance, where he won awards from the California Newspaper Publishers Association for breaking news coverage and writing. He attended Stanford University and now lives in San Francisco. Reach him at anthony@venturebeat.com. You can also follow Anthony on Twitter.

  • What is even more amazing is that the numbers are provided in US dollars, which are the equivalent of much more money in Indian currency.

    For example, data entry personnel are paid $4 per hour, programmers $20 per hour. So those millions of US dollars increase in funding really goes a lot further in India than in the US.
  • Great point, Don!
  • Great information, thanks. Big money is going abroad.
  • @dan:
    according to analysis if that kind of money we don't need in Indian venture, where does it go then? :)
  • Wow, is that really downtown Mumbai.? :)