Venture Capital Deals Surge In Asia As 'Red Hot' India And China Draw Global Investors

More venture capital money is being poured into Asia than any region outside the U.S., as "red hot" India and China see several mega deals, a report from consultancy KPMG and market researcher CB Insights that was released on Wednesday showed. Internet and mobile startups commanded 67 percent of the funding worldwide.

Globally, investors pumped in $37.6 billion into venture capital-backed startups during the September quarter, a period that saw deal sizes getting fatter, while the total number of deals fell for the third time in four quarters. Seed funding and angel investment volume was hit too, slowing for the fifth quarter in a row, as investors showed a marked preference for mature startups, the report showed.

Of the $13.5 billion of venture capital funding that went into Asian startups in the September quarter, funding of Chinese startups "exploded" with multiple $1 billion rounds. China accounted for $9.6 billion, an increase of 315 percent from the year-earlier quarter. India "continues its hot streak," the authors of the report noted, with funding topping $2 billion for the third time in four quarters, and the number of deals topping 120 for the second-straight quarter.

Asia has pulled ahead of Europe in deal count as well, and has seen far more funding, with a total of about $42.3 billion in the last five quarters, compared with about $14.1 billion in Europe.

Mega deals are an important factor boosting Asia's position in the venture rankings. Companies such as cab-hailing services provider Didi Kuaidi in China and One97 Communications, which operates a mobile wallet called Paytm in India, are among those that raised mega rounds of funding. Just the top five deals in Asia accounted for $5.3 billion or 39 percent of all funding in the region in the September quarter.

Globally, funding to VC-backed companies this year has already surpassed last year’s multi-year funding record, according to the report. The first three quarters of 2015 saw $98.4 billion invested in startups worldwide, compared with $88.7 billion in all of 2014.