Over 190 mergers and acquisitions take place in the last 4 years in India’s tech sector

India’s technology sector is continuously moving forward as more than 190 mergers and acquisitions (M&A) happened in the last four years. The total deal size stood at $2.27 billion since January 2011 and the trend would continue to fill technology gaps and talent requirements in the country.

The highest number of deals was sealed during 2014, as per a PTI report.
Further, the start-ups valued at over $1 billion "will aggressively pursue acquisitions to beef up key areas including mobile, ad tech, data science, merchant acquisitions, marketplaces, payments and logistics".
The findings were among key trends that emerged from the 'Think Next Roundtable Report' on M&As in the technology space, conducted by IT thinktank iSPIRT, along with technology focused M&A advisory boutique Signal Hill and Microsoft Ventures.
"The average deal size stands at $11.3 million, lower than that of mature start-up ecosystems such as Israel which is at $113 million and the US, which is at $57 million," the report said.
"Volumes and value will continue to rise rapidly. In business-to-business (B2B) software, cross-border M&A will continue to dominate transaction volumes and values. Whereas, in eCommerce and consumer Internet, domestic M&A transactions will prevail," it said.
The domestic transactions account for over 72 % by volumes in M&A activity.
"Inbound" M&A transactions were predominantly in B2B software at 53%, whereas domestic M&A transactions in consumer Internet and e-commerce stood at 60%.
"Investments in the eCommerce and consumer Internet space have grown 38 times between 2010 and 2014 with deals worth $4.2 billion struck in 2014 alone," it further said.
Of this, Flipkart and Snapdeal accounted for over 50% of the total deal value in 2014, it added.
With a fear of missing out, hedge funds and private equity funds are investing in 'new' Series B ($10-25 million) and Series C & D ($20-250 million) onwards, "fueling a frenzy in valuations," the report stated.

(Image: Indiatimes)