The fall in funding deals has become more evident since February and has shown a downward trend in the last few weeks. The volume of funding deals in the first two months of 2020 was much higher compared to the same period a year ago.
In January-February 2020, the total number of deals stood at 154, up 29% compared to 119 a year ago. Despite this good start, factors such as pandemic-related travel restrictions, lack of in-person meetings and general panic in the market have impacted the frequency of deals.Among the primary stages of startup funding — seed, growth, late and bridge — the most impacted have been growth (Series A and B) and late (Series C and above) stages. Given that high-value deals are largely dependent on physical meetings, growth-stage startups have not been able to close out on existing talks or begin new ones.
Any startup that has less than 6 months of runway would have difficulties as the VCs would start asking for results. However, given the current situation, which was not anticipated at all, we expect that the VCs would show some patience while dealing with their portfolio companies,