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However , data sourced exclusively by Business Today from research firm, Tracxn showed that Tiger which is popular for writing big cheques for firms globally has invested in 7 seed stage startups in India across eight rounds till date.

SoftBank, on the other hand has invested in only one seed stage startup in India across two rounds, as per Tracxn data.  The total funding across various seed stage rounds by both the investment majors is over $10 million.

Tiger Global has also been fairly active in other early stage fund-raises in Indian startups, backing 64 such companies. On the other hand, SoftBank till now has invested in only 2 early-stage startups in India, the Tracxn data revealed.

Will Tiger Global, SoftBank’s focus shift back on early-stage funding rounds?

In early half of the last decade, when the Indian internet companies were yet to take off, Tiger’s participation in seed, Series A stages was very prevalent. However, the fund has been aggressively writing huge cheques and minting unicorns in India especially in the last two years. But analysts feel, Tiger may move back to participating in small size transactions especially as global markets are experiencing a downturn, and tech stocks have been tumbling. Tiger Global according to various media reports which quoted analyst firm, LCH Investments has lost two-thirds of its cumulative gains amounting to $17 billion since last year in the face of major tech rout that its portfolio firms saw during this period.

Photo courtesy of Chris Bird.