India topples China as top market for fintech deals
India has displaced China to become the top market in Asia for fintech deals for the first time, according to a report.
India saw 23 fintech deals during the second quarter of 2019, compared to 15 investments in China during the same period, according to The Global Fintech report from CB Insights, a global intelligence platform.
Some of the notable Indian fintech deals sealed during the period of study include payments firm RazorPay's $74m Series C round led by Sequoia Capital India and Ribbit Capital, as well as insurtech company Acko's $65m Series C round led by Amazon.
The Indian fintech ecosystem is the third-largest in the globe. $6bn investments have already happened in fintech market in the country in the last three to four years"
The fintech market in India is likely to expand to $31bn in 2020, Niti Aayog CEO Amitabh Kant had said in May. India is one of the fastest-growing fintech markets globally, he had said. Kant said that India is the only country in the world with over a billion mobile connections and biometrics, providing enough scope for penetration of fintech technology.
"The Indian fintech ecosystem is the third-largest in the globe. $6bn investments have already happened in fintech market in the country in the last three to four years," Kant had said.
However, this overtake by India comes following a steady decline in the number of fintech deals overall. In the first-quarter of 2019, China witness 32 deals, whilst India saw 29 deals.
This decline is even more apparent when the figures for 2018 are considered, with China having seen 79 venture capital-backed deals in the second-quarter of 2018. This was far greater than the 27 deals which took place in India during the same period.
Global investments in fintech firms tumbled 29% in the first half of the year as deal activity in China fell sharply, pressured by the threat of a trade war with the US. The value of financial technology deals worldwide in the six months ended June 30 declined to $22bn, compared with $31.2bn in the same period a year earlier. The number of deals globally, in contrast, increased 2% to 1,561 in the first half of the year.
The United States remained the biggest market for fintech transactions, with investments jumping 60% to $12.7bn in the first half of 2019, according to Accenture. Investment in the UK nearly doubled to $2.6bn, while Germany, Sweden and France also saw strong gains.
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