This year began on a slow pace for private equity (PE) and venture capital (VC) investments with deals in January falling 49% from the year earlier to $1.8 billion. Deal volume, however, climbed 65% on a year-on-year basis. The drop in deal value is mainly due to the lack of large, $1-billion-plus deals last month. A sector-wise break up shows e-commerce leading the pack with 11 deals worth $607 million, followed by technology with $438 million across nine deals. In terms of number of exits, January 2019 recorded just 13 exits, compared to 29 last year. The lower exit deal activity was primarily on account of fewer open market exits. Besides, there were no PE-backed initial public offerings in January.

(DealStreet Asia)