Q4 of 2024 saw global boom in venture capital investments, but India lagged

Bengaluru: Global venture capital (VC) investment in 2024 rose to $368 billion as investor interest in AI soared, as per a report by KPMG out on Tuesday.

Global VC investment rose from $349.4 billion across 43,320 deals in 2023 to $368.3 billion across 35,684 deals in 2024 despite challenges such as global conflicts, uncertainties associated with a significant number of major elections, and a protracted initial public offering (IPO).

The Americas accounted for $221.7 billion of this total, its highest annual total outside of 2021 and 2022. Of this, the US saw $209 billion in VC investment in 2024.

In sharp contrast, the Asia-Pacific region saw VC investment fall to a nine-year low of $78.8 billion.

Looking at only the October-December (Q4 2024) quarter of 2024, global VC investment rose to $108.6 billion, making it the best quarter since Q2 2022.

This was despite deal volume falling to 7,022, the lowest quarterly volume in more than a decade.

A record number of multi-billion dollar deals in the AI space propelled the strong Q4 results.

However, India saw muted VC investment in Q4 with the country seeing a sequential decline from $3.7 billion to $2.6 billion in VC investment.

The slowdown in completed deals was likely more of a speed bump than a long term challenge, with some optimism that deals will materialize heading into Q1 2025, as per the report.

Nitish Poddar, Partner and National Leader, Private Equity, KPMG in India said, “When you look at the results year-over-year, 2024 has been a much better year compared to 2023 for VC investment in India, and 2025 could be even better. While Q4 2024 saw us hit a bit of a speed bump, we’re still seeing a lot of activity in the VC market here, especially in the area of quick commerce.”

Along with India, VC investment in the Asia-Pacific region dropped to $12.8 billion across 1,977 deals in Q4 2024, making it the lowest across both total investment and deal value that the region has seen in over ten years. China saw a sequential drop from $10.3 billion to $5.8 billion, and Japan saw a drop from $2 billion to $1.3 billion.

In the first quarter of the current calendar year, VC activity is expected to pick up with more IPOs.