It shows funds below Rs 400 crore are driving fresh capital, while the top quartile of VCs have delivered seven times higher returns than the industry average, underscoring both the boom in homegrown capital and the power-law nature of venture investing.
The report indicates that the share of Venture Capital in India’s private capital pool has increased from Rs 1.04 lakh crore in 2015 to an expected Rs 4.8–4.9 lakh crore by 2025, growing from 24% to 36% of total private capital assets.
“Fund sizes below Rs400 crore have been the real workhorses of the VC industry. An average of 10 new funds of over Rs 300 crore each have launched annually in the past three years, steadily adding to India’s dry powder,” said Preksha Razdan, Investment Analyst at Fibonacci X.
Dry powder available for deployment has ballooned from Rs 100 crore in 2015 to Rs 5,000 crore by March 2025, a whopping 50 times increase, reflecting a strong appetite for early-stage opportunities.
Although there has been a significant increase, the report indicates that returns are still highly concentrated. Out of 169 schemes reviewed, only 48 delivered at least 50% back to their investors. Top-quartile funds recorded a distributed-to-paid-in (DPI) ratio of 3 times – seven times higher than the industry average. “This confirms the power-law dynamic of venture capital. The top funds create meaningful outcomes while the majority deliver modest returns, reinforcing the need for sharper fund selection,” Razdan added.A structural shift has also been the rise of domestic limited partners (LPs). By 2025, 39% of new funds had a fully domestic LP base, up from 20% just two years earlier. Family offices have emerged as influential players: 71% invest directly in startups, and nearly half write cheques under ₹10 crore, seeding India’s early-stage ecosystem.
“The rise of domestic LPs tightens due diligence and makes fundraising more demanding, but it also roots venture capital in India’s own investor ecosystem. This evolution is crucial to building a resilient, locally aligned startup economy,” said Kulmani Rana, Founder and CEO of Fibonacci X.
The report also noted that many of India’s leading VC firms were built by first-time managers without global templates to follow. Some funds with SaaS, fintech, and consumer-focused bets saw AUM grow up to 48 times within a decade.
Operations-heavy marketplace aggregators outlasted fast-scaling consumer unicorns. Retention data from 2021 shows 83% of unicorns remained resilient, with SaaS ventures averaging more than seven years of durability compared to five years for edtech and marketplaces.
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