Following a slow August, CrunchBase data shows that September venture investments are making a strong rebound as $5.1B has already been invested worldwide, surpassing August totals with still a week left in the month.
Asian startups have raised $771M in 80 rounds so far in September, led by $327M in 20 venture rounds in China and $279M in India over 24 rounds.
Beijing startups have amassed the fourth highest total so far in September, behind San Francisco, Berlin and New York. Le Vision Pictures, one of China’s leading entertainment companies, took in the largest funding in a $55.4M Series B this week from CHT Capital. Le Vision is now China’s third largest film company not owned by the state, and plans to IPO domestically in the near future. Snowball Finance took in the second largest Beijing round for September with a $40M Series C from Renren and Morningside Private Investors. Snowball operates financial data platform xueqiu.com.
Bangalore and Tokyo are tied for the second hottest market this month, with seven venture rounds each. In Bangalore, grocery e-tailer Bigbasket.com brought in $32.8M from Zodius Capital and ICICI Venture. Bigbasket already operates in Bangalore, Hyderabad and Mumbai and hopes to expand to Delhi and other major Indian cities with the new capital. Newshunt also took in an $18M Series B from Sequoia Capital, Matrix Partners India and Omidyar Network. The impressive list of backers for Newshunt anticipate dominating mobile internet in India.
Although very active this month, investments in Tokyo were highlighted by smaller, early stage rounds. Recruit Holdings put $3.1M into business travel site Relux, while Mitsubishi Financial and Nissay Capital combined for a $3.1M Series A for edtech startup mana.bo. Innova, TYFFON, Empathy Co, FiNC and Dely rounded out the September venture activity so far in Tokyo.
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