The year 2018 has witnessed more and more venture capitalists exiting their investments with the numbers nearly increasing two-fold to a record $165 billion.
The development is primarily driven by large exits, which included Flipkart's acquisition by US retail major Walmart Inc. for a whopping $16 billion, a report from alternative assets data tracker Preqin showed. The last year witnessed 1,094 exit deals as against 1,307 exits worth $87 billion recorded previous year.
The major exits of 2018 included Drug-maker Novartis' acquisition of gene therapy-focused firm AveXis for $8.7 billion and enterprise software major SAP's $8 billion acquisition of survey and research software company Qualtrics.
Apart from exits, Venture capital investments also reached new heights last year, with 14,889 VC deals adding up to $274 billion, a 42 percent hike as compared to $192 billion in 2017.
India VC funding growth
The Preqin report highlights that Greater China and North America pushed the Venture capital investments. North America and Greater China including China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macau contributed for $219 billion, or 79.9%, of funding on the global scale.
While North America contributed $113 billion in the VC exits, Greater China contributed $107 billion. India was also not far behind in the VC investment and recorded a healthy amount of $49.4 billion.
Notably, nine of the 10 largest deals closed during the last year were based out of Asia-based and seven of them were in China. The largest VC deal ever announced included $14 billion funding of Ant Financial Services Group which took place in June 2018.
Christopher Elvin, head of private equity, Preqin, said: "2018 marks another year of record-breaking deal-making in the venture capital industry. Asia, in particular, has seen further growth in venture capital-backed activity, seeing activity on pace with that of North America. It looks like China and North America will continue to vie for the position of the foremost venture capital deal market in the coming months."
