With 304 investments worth about $1 billion, the Information Technology and IT-enabled services industry was most favoured by VC investors during 2016.

Mumbai: The venture capital investment in early stage growth companies in 2016 witnessed a significant drop as investors turned cautious and selective in making investment decisions.

According to Venture Intelligence, venture capital firms made a total of 405 investments in India worth $1.4 billion during 2016 compared to 512 deals worth $2 billion in 2015, a 21 per cent drop in volume terms and 27 per cent drop in value terms.

With 304 investments worth about $1 billion, the Information Technology and IT-enabled services industry was most favoured by VC investors during 2016, accounting for 75 per cent of the investments (69 per cent by value). However, compared to 2015, the investment IT companies was down 17 per cent.

Among the top IT investments, cloud telephony firm Knowlarity, online SME loans provider LendingKart and database software firm ScaleArc raised $20 million each.