The Covid-19 pandemic had little impact on the deal street as global VC funding in 2020 was $300.5 billion - up from $281.6 billion in 2019 and second only to 2018’s record $329.7 billion despite a drop in deal volume, the latest edition of a KPMG report said on Saturday.
The Private Enterprise Venture Pulse report, said that despite global uncertainty resulting from a number of ongoing events including the COVID-19 pandemic, global VC investment remained very robust in Q4’20, with $80.8 billion in investment across 5,418 deals.
It is this strong performance that helped drive annual global VC investment to $300.5 billion despite a drop in deal volume.
Global median deal sizes rose across all deal stages in 2020 - to $1.2 million for seed/angel deals, $4.5 million for early stage deals, and $9.9 million for later stage deals.
Also, global first-time venture financing dropped for the third straight year - to $24.9 billion across 6,580 deals in 2020 from $29.4 billion across 8,149 deals in 2019, the report said.
China accounted for the top five largest VC deals in the world during Q4’20.
The report said that Global VC-backed exit activity reached a record high of $189 billion in Q4’20 as the march of unicorn exits continued with high profile IPO exits.
With regard to India, the report said that VC investment here remained relatively robust in Q4’20. While VC investment dropped somewhat during the quarter, India saw deal volume rise to its highest level since Q1’18.