Despite meltdown, VC investment up in India
Friday, 20 February 2009, 14:49 IST
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New York: The global economic meltdown may have spread to all technology hotspots in the fourth quarter of the last fiscal, but venture capital investment in India has grown a whopping 90 percent over the same period, a US daily reported Thursday. Investment in Indian companies stayed strong even in the fourth quarter, though the annual growth was slower than in China or in India in past years, the report said quoting data released Wednesday by venture capital industry tracker Dow Jones VentureSource. Venture capitalists invested $864 million during the year, up 3 percent from 2007, and $270 million in the fourth quarter a surprising growth rate of 90 percent for the same period last year, the New York Times report said. In 2008, venture capitalists invested $13.4 billion in young companies in Europe, Israel and India, according to VentureSource. That was up 5 percent from 2007. Comparatively, venture capital investment in the US for the year fell 8 percent to $28.8 billion. In China, venture capitalists invested a record $4.2 billion. That was up 50 percent from the year before, though still significantly less than what is invested in US start-ups. By the fourth quarter, investment slowed, falling 9 percent from the same period in 2007 to $716 million, VentureSource data showed. In Europe too, venture funding slowed after a strong first quarter, falling 15 percent to $6.5 billion in 2008 and 38 percent to $1.3 billion in the fourth quarter. The report said only 881 European companies were backed last year, the lowest since VentureSource began tracking the data in 1999.
Source: IANS
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