Tiger Global Management, one of the world’s most aggressive technology investors, has demonstrated its confidence in India this year by continuing to deploy capital, albeit on a smaller scale, while slowing investments elsewhere in the world due to macroeconomic headwinds.
Tiger Global, which has backed at least 38 unicorns in India to date, participated in 50 funding rounds of Indian startups in the first 11 months of 2022, compared to 64 in the whole of 2021, according to Venture Intelligence data. While the deal count for 2022 is slightly lower than that of 2021, it is significantly higher than that of 2020 and the pre-pandemic years, according to the data.
The New York-based hedge fund participated in 19 deals in India in 2020, compared to 31 deals in 2019. On average, Tiger Global has been participating in about 26 deals a year since 2014.
Queries sent to Tiger Global remained unanswered.
Tiger Global partners have visited India at least four times this year to meet startup founders and early-stage investors in order to explore investment opportunities in the country, Moneycontrol previously reported.
Tiger Global partners Scott Shleifer, Deep Verma, and Griffin Schroeder visited India in November to meet stakeholders and sounded ‘extremely bullish.’
However, in terms of value, Tiger Global has slowed in India this year, as it has globally, according to data from Venture Intelligence. Tiger Global invested $807 million in the first eleven months of 2022, a 70 percent decrease from the previous year’s total of $2.75 billion.
Naturally, the company’s average cheque size has also fallen as it has invested more at the early stages, a strategy shift for the New York-based hedge fund firm, which typically invests at the later stages.
In the first eleven months of 2022, Tiger Global participated in Series A rounds totalling $458 million, an increase of 80 percent compared to the same period the previous year, despite the fact that the New York-based hedge fund company has reduced its participation in Series A rounds globally by 11 percent.
The hedge fund’s average cheque size has thus declined substantially, from over $42.92 million in 2021 to $16.14 million this year. The average cheque size this year is also lower than the previous nine years’ average of $25.42 million.
So far in 2022, it has participated in one round of more than $500 million, compared to three rounds of more than $500 million in 2021. Byju’s $665 million fundraise announced in March was Tiger Global’s largest round this year. Besides Byju’s, it took part in Polygon’s $450 million fundraise, Delhivery’s $304 million anchor investment round, and ChargeBee and Moglix’s $250 million rounds.
Tiger Global, along with SoftBank, invested $3.6 billion in Flipkart in 2021. It also invested in Dream11’s $840 million round and Zomato’s $576 million round, which it raised in February before its IPO. Tiger Global also participated in Unacademy’s $440 million round and ShareChat’s $408 million round.
Tiger Global has been partially or completely exiting companies almost every year. Since 2014, it has partially or fully exited as many as 35 companies. According to data, it sold the most secondary shares in 2019 when it exited seven companies. Tiger Global has made five partial or complete exits in 2022.
In 2022, Tiger Global completely exited both Blinkit and LimeRoad.com by selling its stakes to Zomato and V-Mart Retail, respectively. Tiger Global sold shares in Zomato and Policbazaar through open market operations and block deals after the tech platforms went public last year.
In 2021, Tiger Global sold its ake in Ola Cabs to Warburg Pincus and Temasek and also in CultureAlley which was acquired by Byju’s.
