New Delhi, Jan 23 (IANS): With 294 deals, venture capital investment in India reached $3.1 billion in the fourth quarter of 2020, compared to $3.6 billion in the previous quarter, said a KPMG report.

While VC investment dropped somewhat during the fourth quarter of 2020, India saw the deal volume rise to its highest level since Q1 of 2018, according to the KPMG Private Enterprise Venture Pulse report for Q4 2020.

During Q4, home delivery, marketplace platforms, and e-commerce were the hottest areas of investment, attracting the majority of India's funding rounds of $100 million or more, including a $200 million raise by marketplace platform Cars24 and a $660 million raise by food delivery company Zomato.

"There have been a number of sectors that have really benefited from the pandemic here in India. Interest in staples delivery - fresh food, groceries, and the likes - has grown quite significantly in recent months, in addition to online retail and gaming. That has driven a lot of investment," Nitish Poddar, Partner and National Leader -- Private Equity, KPMG in India, said in a statement.

"Then there's edtech. It's been an attractive area for VC investors for a couple of years now -- but in 2020, that interest skyrocketed and so did the investments," he added.

Despite global uncertainty resulting from a number of ongoing events, including the Covid-19 pandemic, global VC investment remained very robust in Q4, with $80.8 billion in investments across 5,418 deals.

This strong performance helped drive annual global VC investment to $300.5 billion in 2020 -- up from $281.6 billion in 2019 and second only to 2018's record $329.7 billion despite a drop in deal volume, said the report.