Intro

Since the launch of the first social network, Six Degrees, in 1997, and up to the present times, the popularity of social networking appears to be far from declining. With the developers constantly adding new features to their applications, the industry in its modern state can offer several, if not dozens of, services of all kinds, including social shopping, social media, different online forums, and social networking sites. Other practices in the industry include social recruiting, blogging, online communities, and more. According to the Business Research Company, the global social media market is predicted to grow from $94.83 billion in 2020 to $102.62 billion in 2021, representing a CAGR of 8.2%. Expanding with even higher CAGR of 32%, the market will reportedly reach USD 308.96 billion by 2025.  As the analysis shows, investors in South Asia are interested in putting money into the Social Network industry. Over the last 2 years, VCs and corporate investors in the region contributed $657.3M, accounting for 2.9% of all money raised in the field. This amount of capital was allocated by 11 investors, featured accordingly on the chart below:

South Asia's Social Network Industry: Top 11 Investors
data provided by Unicorn Nest

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Key takeaways

  • Funds Geography - All 11 VCs are located in one country, India. While 7 of them are located in Mumbai, the rest four are distributed between New Delhi, Chennai, and Bengaluru. The most money is received by startups from India. Less often, the listed investors choose to contribute to projects from the United States. Therefore, the majority of the VCs prefer to invest in startups from their country of origin.
  • Industry Focus - The top priority for the listed funds' investments is the Finance industry; Enterprise Software, Consumer field, and Gamification are the runners-up.
  • Important Years - The oldest firm, Sequoia Capital India, was established in 2000, while the newest one, WEH Ventures, was created 17 years after that, in 2017. The same year, 2017, also showed several other funds emerging, making it the year when most of the listed funds started operating. For seven of them, 2019 held the most successful deals. For the rest, the years 2020, 2018, and 2016 became fruitful as well.
  • Investments - Although sometimes the number of rounds climbs up to 6 per year, the firms usually participate two times annually. The highest and the lowest number of rounds per fund are 280 and 4, respectively; this measurement's average value is 91.5, and the median is 51.0. The minimum of lead investments, 3, differs from the minimum of standard ones by only one round; however, the maximum for this type, 122, is significantly lower. So is the average, which equals 39.5 for lead investments, and the median, which rests at 22.0. Measured in percentage points, the difference of the lead financing from the average ranges from -47.19 to 13.31 for the sampled establishments. This index's average value and the median are both negative, -22.32 and -23.5, respectively. Such figures indicate that several VCs from the list act as lead investors less often than others.
  • Typical Rounds - VCs usually have 3-4 partakers per round. Less frequently, only 2-3 investors participate. With Early funding prevalent, investors also enter at Seed, Late, and Venture stages. Preferably, the firms invest less than 100 thousand per round. Sometimes, this size lays between USD 10-50 million. At maximum, the funds' average multiplier for portfolio companies reaches 1.98. Its average value is 0.45, and the median equals 0.27. The majority of the featured VCs have a zero multiplicator according to the last known valuation.
While aiming primarily at Finance projects, the top 11 investors in the South Asian Social Networks industry also consider Enterprise Software, Gamification, and Consumer fields. Usually, their round size does not go beyond 100 000; in some cases, the companies issue up to 10-50 million US dollars.