For the first quarter of 2021, Private Equity (PE) and Venture Capital (VC) firms invested $508 million in eight deals in companies based out of Tamil Nadu. During the same quarter last year, the number of deals were higher and stood at 14 and firms had invested $336 million.
Among the top firms that received PE-VC funding in the State during the January-March 2021 quarter are: Five Star Business Finance ($234 million), Uniphore Software Systems ($140 million), Ally ($50 million) and Shriram EPC ($48 million), according to data provided by Venture Intelligence, a research service focused on private company financials, transactions and their valuations.
“The value of deals has risen significantly, even as the number of deals (volume) has slid. This naturally has boosted the average deal size, indicating the increasing comfort of investors to back companies that are already established or ripe for scale up with large amounts of capital,” Arun Natarajan, founder of Venture Intelligence said.
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“The increasing interest among investors for SaaS and also fin-tech and tech savvy financial services companies, is favouring Chennai-based companies with traditional strengths in these sectors,” Mr. Natarajan added.
The data provided by Venture Intelligence, shows that last year, even after the COVID-19 lockdown came into effect from March last week, companies in Tamil Nadu managed to pull in investments across 22 deals until December.
In the second quarter of 2020, around $15 million came into seven deals and in the following quarter around $97 million was invested across five deals. And in the last quarter of 2020, PE-VC firms pumped in $157 million in 10 deals.
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In terms of angel investments, there were three deals during the January to March 2021 quarter when compared to seven deals during the same period in 2020.
The three startups that received angel investments during this quarter are the ePlane Company, YAP and AgniKul Cosmos.