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After the recent “Google vs. SEO” case, what can business owners learn about their long-term SEO strategies?

It’s no secret that 2016 has seen its fair share of newsworthy drama. But one story you might have missed was a relatively under-the-radar brush up between Google and research company e-ventures Worldwide.

Google argued that e-ventures’ claims violated the First Amendment. e-ventures had allegedly exploited loopholes in Google’s algorithm, thus enabling the company to propel low-quality and irrelevant content higher in the rankings. Google, which ensures its users can easily find high-quality, relevant content, responded by manually removing e-ventures from search results.

e-ventures took legal action, despite lawsuits like this having been determined unfounded numerous times in the past. “Google’s site, Google’s rules” would be an apt (albeit informal) paraphrase of the standard legal decision.

This year, however, a Florida judge decided that e-ventures’ case was, in part, valid. After all, Google holds a great deal of control over the web, which is a public space for discourse; therefore it should be held to a high standard.

Also Read: Hong Kong’s Soundbrenner raises US$1.5M to bring metronome into 21st century

The case between Google and e-ventures offers plenty of valuable insight into how you can optimize your own company’s online presence. In this article, I plan to share how business owners can develop a long-term SEO strategy that insulates them from the volatility that instances like this can present.

How does this case impact your SEO efforts?

Manually removing e-ventures was viewed by some as a rather troubling decision. That’s because “search engine manipulation” could describe pretty much any SEO activity, whether you’re redesigning your website to be more user-friendly, or are writing new website copy, integrating new forms of media, or building a solid collection of backlinks.

SEO is a highly integral part of many companies’ marketing strategies. A growing number of businesses now invest heavily in improving their rankings: a project that often entails hiring web designers, writers, video crews and other content generators. So whenever the “rules” that search engines use to determine rankings change, it’s a big deal for businesses.

That’s why, in the face of such changes, I highly recommend that business owners make an effort to adapt in order to stay competitive.

Take the rise of mobile-friendly design, for example: When Google decided to prioritize mobile-friendly design, thousands upon thousands of businesses responded virtually overnight by investing in mobile-friendly development. Those that did saw their rankings skyrocket. Those that failed to respond to these changes saw their rankings fall. This was known as “Mobilegeddon” to those of us in the SEO industry.

So, how should your business respond?

As an SEO expert, I find the notion that “Google is trying to kill SEO” to be exaggerated. Over the years, I’ve seen search algorithms change and evolve countless times, and every change inevitably inspires a few self-proclaimed industry experts to state that SEO will “never be the same.”

The truth is, search algorithms are always going to be updated and remodeled, and SEO must adapt to these changes in order to remain successful. The best way for you as a business owner to react is to understand that, despite such changes, the basic principle of SEO is always going to remain the same: Google and other search engines want to provide their users with the highest quality content.

This is a concept that I always stress to my clients, especially when they worry about changes in SEO. The details of SEO, though relevant, will never be as important simply providing a good user experience.

To stay ahead of the curve, Google actually created a website optimization mini-course, Google Webmaster, that includes tips for how website administrators can rank better among other helpful topics covered. The SEO section of this course makes a clear distinction between what is known as “white hat” and “black hat” SEO, and notes that dishonest attempts to improve search rankings are likely to be counterproductive.

Google also has a page on what are considered to be “good” SEO techniques. To put it in the broadest of terms, good SEO strives to connect content with the audience that will most sincerely be interested in it. It uses creative yet concise language, along with a diversity of media formats and user-friendly design to give visitors an optimal experience. It also enables savvy companies to promote themselves to relevant audiences effectively and efficiently.

Also Read: 8 questions about Chinese tech we will see answered in 2017

The best long-term strategy you can take as a business owner is to provide excellent content. Offering a quality experience to your users should always take priority over the minutia of SEO, because quality is the one characteristic that we know all search engines promote. By focusing on website quality, you will be setting your company up for online success both now and in the future, regardless of whatever court cases, algorithm changes or technological advances the future may hold.

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Robert Gerov is the Founder of VokSEO, an Webdesign, Online Marketing, and Reputation Management Company based in New York City.

The Young Entrepreneur Council (YEC) is an invite-only organisation comprising the world’s most promising young entrepreneurs. In partnership with Citi, YEC recently launched BusinessCollective, a free virtual mentorship programme that helps millions of entrepreneurs start and grow businesses.

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Soundbrenner has built a vibrating watch-like metronome for musicians of all skill levels

“Rhythm is something you either have or don’t have, but when you have it, you have it all over.”

Those are the words of the one-and-only Elvis Presley. But, unfortunately for all those wannabe Elvis’ out there, Rhythm also takes practice — and can be one of the most tedious parts of being a professional musician.

Bands have to play for hours in front of obnoxious click tracks to ensure they can be on beat when it comes time to perform live.

To solve this problem, a Hong Kong-based hardware startup named Soundbrenner has developed a vibrating watch-like wearable that vibrates to the rhythm and can help with both practices and performances.

Soundbrenner announced today it has raised US$1.5 million to pursue the next stage in product development and pursue market expansion in 2017. This means investing the money in R&D, retail distribution and entering the music education industry.

The company is currently working on the second-generation hardware product and is improving the accompanying software.

“The new funding gives us the opportunity to research into new technologies and applications that we can be used to improve the Soundbrenner Pulse and our companion apps. We are excited to use the resources to work on new products to connect musicians together, taking rhythm into the 21st century,” said Soundbrenner Co-founder and CEO Julian Vogels in a statement.

Also Read: Hong Kong’s Soundbrenner is raising US$500k for their musician wearable

The product, called Soundbrenner Pulse looks like a watch (and can be placed on one’s upper arm or ankle depending on the person’s preference. It then generates a pulsing vibration like a metronome that delivers the desired beat.

The wearable can vibrate at an amplitude of 6G — about six-times as strong as the average smartphone. If that sounds intense, think about it, the product needs to be able to be useful during a concert. It would be practically impossible to feel a smartphone vibration while trying to perform in front of a crowd.

But don’t worry, for those one-on-one piano lessons, the vibrations can be turned down.

It can also be adjusted by turning the dial and actually has a ‘safety’ feature that ensures it never turns on if that is desired.

It’s also designed to be tough — it is resistant to sweat, can take some beating and has a band that is very easy to remove/replace.

Entering the music education market

For Soundbrenner, taking the Pulse to the music education market is a clear next step. For students, a vibrating wristband may be easier than trying to focus on keeping time via a traditional metronome while focussing on what notes to play next.

“We constantly receive feedback from customers saying that this new form of rhythm experience has really helped improve their time keeping. We believe that the Soundbrenner Pulse can bring great value to music students through performance feedback, rhythm practices and better guidance from teachers,”said Soundbrenner CEO Florian Simmendinger in an official statement.

Also Read: Hong Kong logistics startup Lalamove raises US$30 million for major expansion

In December 2015, the company raised a US$500,000 round to facilitate its February 2016 launch.

The company is an Alumni of the Hong Kong-based IoT accelerator Brinc and has raised US$240,000 in an Indiegogo campaign that is fulfilling its orders.

The software has been downloaded over 150,000 and features Ableton Link — another metronome software. Including Ableton Link makes it easier for bands and musicians to keep the Soundbrenner Pulse integrated into a larger digital music workflow.

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The round was led by Qumra Capital, Goldman Sachs Private Capital Investing, Deutsche Telekom Capital Partners, and Pitango Growth

Image Credit: highwaystarz / 123RF Stock Photo

Mobile attribution and marketing data analytics company AppsFlyer today announced that it has raised an additional US$56 million in Series C financing, bringing its total funding to US$84 million.

The round was led by Qumra Capital, Goldman Sachs Private Capital Investing (PCI), Deutsche Telekom Capital Partners (DTCP) and Pitango Growth with participation from existing investors Magma Venture Partners, Pitango Venture Capital and Eight Roads Ventures.

Qumra Capital partner Boaz Dinte has also joined AppsFlyer’s board of directors while Goldman Sachs PCI joining as observers.

“We’ve always prided ourselves on being able to provide the best tools and valuable insights to our clients and this investment is a landmark in our company’s history,” said Ronen Mense, AppsFlyer VP, Asia.

“It’s great validation for the value we continue to deliver for our amazing customers and the marketing industry as a whole around Asia. This funding round will help us continue to expand our capabilities and partnerships especially in Asia Pacific, and to continue delivering the most efficient and powerful measurement platform for marketers with both regional and global aspirations,” he added.

Also Read: Tencent and Ookbee launch joint venture to grow digital content in Thailand

Mense also stated that currently users in Asia spend more on in-app purchases than any other region, and that the company plans on building from this momentum.

“In addition, this funding will fuel our continued investments and focus in China – helping global marketers continue to penetrate that market with our measurement tools and key partnerships with Baidu, Tencent, and others,” he explained.

Ronan Mense, AppsFlyer VP, Asia. Image Credit: AppsFlyer

In details, according to an AppsFlyer spokesperson, the following are the company’s plan for the Asian region:

• Accelerate hiring to grow business in China and SEA
• Opening an office in Indonesia, where it has secured clients such as Tokopedia and Go-Jek
• Further enhancing the product to meet the evolving needs of marketers
• More support to help shape the overall industry

The company claimed to have grown its revenue by 500 per cent, as well as its staffs from 40 to 240 people across 12 global offices in two years. It also claimed to measure US$6 billion in mobile marketing spend annually, processes over 300 billion mobile events every month, has more than 2,000 integrated partners and supports over ten thousand marketers as clients.

Apart from being selected recently as a measurement partner by Pinterest, Tencent, Adobe, IBM, and Yahoo!, to name a few, it also serves as official measurement partner to Facebook, Google and Twitter.

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When writing about startups, it’s hard to get readers excited with terms like “mobile attribution” and “marketing analytics” – it’s not as sexy as “artificial intelligence” and “self-driving cars.” Yet here’s AppsFlyer, a marketing analytics startup that specializes in extracting insights from mobile app installs and usage, bagging US$56 million for its series C round.

This brings its total funding to US$84 million.

The funding comes from Qumra Capital, Goldman Sachs Private Capital Investing, Deutsche Telekom Capital Partners, and Pitango Growth.

China will be a big focus for the company.

AppsFlyer’s tools are integrated into most popular mobile apps and systems to monitor their use. This helps marketers target their campaigns with greater accuracy and measure their effectiveness and the return on their investment.

The startup can track, for example, how many new users installed an app driven by a particular ad campaign or what the revenue from a specific campaign was. It also uses its data to provide insights into certain industries like mobile gaming.

Israel-headquartered AppsFlyer has offices in 12 countries and claims its tech can be found in 98 percent of the world’s smartphones. Its partners include names like Google, Twitter, Facebook, Alibaba, Pinterest, Adobe, IBM, Go-Jek, and Tokopedia. The startup says it has over 10,000 marketer clients.

Asia is mobile

The company will use the funding to expand its products and its partnerships in Asia-Pacific, says Ronen Mense, VP of Asia. “Users in Asia already spend more on in-app purchases than in any other region, and we will build on this momentum,” he explains.

China will be a big focus for the company, he adds. The startup will use its partnerships with companies like Tencent and Baidu to explore that market further.

This also means hiring more people in China and Southeast Asia and opening a new office in Indonesia. Some acquisitions might be in the cards too.

AppsFlyer operates in a crowded market where several companies try to keep track of your mobile usage in a number of different ways to provide marketing insights. Examples include Adjust, Tune, App Annie, and Appier.

Existing investors Magma Venture Partners, Pitango Venture Capital, and Eight Roads Ventures also participated in the series C.

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Ketchupp is solving the user problem of ‘what should I order today” by recommending the best dishes driven by its Artificial Intelligence-based algorithm.

food

Ketchupp, a meta search engine for online food ordering in India, has raised US$500,000 in seed round of funding, led by India Quotient, with participation from a group of unnamed angel investors.

The startup plans to utilise the financing to improve its product adding analytics and Big Data capabilities.

Founded by a team of food lovers, Ketchupp is a meta search engine for online food ordering. It’s solving the user problem of ‘what should I order today” by recommending the best dishes driven by its Artificial Intelligence-based algorithm.

Also Read: Excuse me, are you gonna eat that? This Singapore startup plans to cut food wastage through tech

Ketchupp neither takes online orders nor is a delivery-based company. It claims that Ketchupp stands over the top of online food ordering companies like Zomato, Swiggy, Foodpanda by enabling the user to take a decision.

The team believes that with today’s on the go user being confused for choice (rather than spoilt for choice), a meta search engine is the need of the hour. Similar phenomenon has already happened in travel and fashion.

Currently, Ketchupp caters to nine cities — Delhi, Noida, Gurgaon, Hyderabad, Bangalore, Pune, Mumbai, Chennai, and Kolkata — with more than 10,000 most recommended dishes. Ketchupp has 250,000 monthly users.

Also Read: This Tiny, 2-year-(Owl)d startup raised US$28M, flew over India, and now looking for a crash landing

Anand Lunia of India Quotient said: “Meta search engines only work when underlying market is deep enough. We believe time for that has now come for food. Revenue model is a mix of media and lead gen. Hence the company will have high operational efficiency and will have business economics of a tech media company.”

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Ecommerce and logistics company Anchanto has launched a new software platform that helps merchants, brands, and distributors sell products on a multitude of marketplaces. The product, called SelluSeller, was announced today during a company event in Singapore.

Users can manage their inventory and simultaneously upload their listings to several ecommerce websites, including Lazada, Matahari, and Flipkart. They no longer have to repeat the process for each individual site. SelluSeller allows merchants to sell cross-border and connect to logistics and warehousing services from Anchanto’s network in Southeast Asia.

“We wanted to connect brands and sellers to marketplaces,” Anchanto co-founder and CEO Vaibhav Dabhade said during the event. “You can outsource your logistics, including cross-border, and manage your brand’s online presence with one click.”

If Anchanto’s current services are Facebook, SelluSeller is its Facebook Messenger.

Anchanto targets both smaller sellers that have fewer than 1,000 sales per month as well as large brands and distributors. For the former, it charges a flat fee of US$21 per month. The latter pay US$0.07 per order.

However, the company offers sellers the option to use third-party logistics providers that are already Anchanto clients and part of its warehouse management and fulfillment management network. If they do, SelluSeller becomes free to use.

The play is to create an ecosystem that revolves around Anchanto’s services. As these are its main source of revenue, the company hopes to drive more users toward them. If its current services are Facebook, SelluSeller is its Facebook Messenger, as Vaibhav puts it.

Future plans include connecting the SelluSeller platform with a point-of-sale system that Anchanto can offer to merchants who don’t have such a solution ready.

Anchanto expects to have more than 5,000 merchants and brands on SelluSeller in the next four to five months. It has been working with Lazada to develop and test the software, and the Southeast Asian ecommerce dynamo is one of its first partners.

Other partners include luxury product distribution firm Bluebell Group, lifestyle and apparel distributor JayGee Group, and global market expansion company DKSH. Altogether, the product pilot includes 55 brands and distributors.

SelluSeller enables merchants to sell on a multitude of online marketplaces. Image credit: Anchanto.

Riding the ecommerce wave

SelluSeller is an evolution of the company’s channel management services and expands Anchanto’s products, which until now focused mostly on global fulfillment, cross-border shipping, and warehouse management for clients like Levis and Groupon. The company has also helped businesses from Europe get their products on marketplaces like Qoo10, Lazada, Flipkart, and more.

The SelluSeller concept sounds similar to Ship.li, an idea for a unified online storefront that took care of the whole ecommerce process from online listing to logistics and delivery. Anchanto was working on it a couple of years ago but the project didn’t pan out.

Anchanto expects to have more than 5,000 merchants and brands on SelluSeller in the next four to five months.

“Ship.li was ahead of its time and uptake was difficult,” Vaibhav tells Tech in Asia. The company stepped back from it and focused on its warehouse management and logistics side. SelluSeller feels like Anchanto is picking that thread back up and following it a little more gingerly.

The company raised an undisclosed amount for its series B round in November 2015 from Japanese process outsourcing company Transcosmos. The deal allowed Anchanto to expand its services to countries like Indonesia, Thailand, Japan, Korea, and the US.

At the time, Anchanto reported a gross merchandise volume (GMV) of US$19 million. Vaibhav says the company’s overall GMV has almost doubled in the time since the series B round, while revenue grew by 75 percent in 2016, although he doesn’t provide more specific figures.

Converted from Singapore dollars. US$1 = S$1.42

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Whether it is artificial intelligence or targeted advertising, it’s the quality of data that determines how smart the results will be. Berlin-based Zeotap, which also has a joint venture in Bangalore, zeroed in on this aspect from the very outset of its adtech business in late 2014. It started tying up with telecom companies across Europe and Asia to use their customer data for targeting mobile ads.

Today it has partnerships not only with major telecom companies but also a leading security company and a navigation services provider for their user data. What makes large corporations such as these comfortable in sharing their user data with Zeotap is its leak-proof systems to protect the privacy of consumers, under strict European norms. It has already been certified for the new EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) that comes into effect next year.

“Our unrelenting focus on privacy by design principles in systems engineering is one of our most formidable assets,” says Projjol Banerjea, co-founder and CPO of Zeotap.

Investors agree. Zeotap today announced US$12.75 million in series B funding from US-based New Science Ventures and Here, a provider of mapping and location-based services backed by German auto companies.

Existing investors Capnamic Ventures and Iris Capital also participated in the new round.

Mobile advertising accounted for more than half of the US$195 billion digital ad spend in 2016.

“Their solution comes at a time when many data owners are looking for the right partner,” says Edzard Overbeek, CEO of Here.

Zeotap will use the funding to grow its engineering and data science team in Bangalore and expand into new markets for partnerships with data owners. It formed a joint venture called Mozeo in partnership with Mogae Media in India a few months ago.

Mobile advertising accounted for more than half of the US$195 billion digital ad spend in 2016, according to eMarketer. There’s also a growing shift towards programmatic advertising. This is an automated process of buying and selling digital ad inventory, instead of the manual negotiation and insertion of ads.

The main hitch lies in the lack of reliable large-scale data. “Programmatic advertising hasn’t picked up pace in India yet, especially on mobile, even though consumer eyeballs continue to move to mobile,” points out Sandeep Goyal, chairman of Mogae Media. “The fundamental reason is the scarcity of trustworthy data for targeting. This leads to imprecise and ineffective campaigns that disappoint buyers and curtail their appetite for programmatic advertising.”

This is the gap Zeotap is filling with its access to telecom user data. Three of India’s largest telecom operators are among its clients. “India is an important market for us where we’ve established the benefits of a cross-carrier model with multiple operators,” Projjol tells Tech in Asia. “We have coverage of over 60 percent of the market currently.”

The value proposition for Zeotap is the quality of telecom data which has specifics on the user’s age, sex, location, income level, and more. This is richer than the user data mobile advertisers have to work with otherwise.

See: User data superior to Facebook, Google: one startup’s recipe to dominate mobile ads

As Projjol explained to Tech in Asia in an earlier interview, “The data with telcos is deterministic (as opposed to probabilistic modelling techniques used by almost all current data providers), longitudinal (they have the full picture of a user), and scalable (their subscriber bases are in the hundreds of millions).”

Zeotap hides or encrypts personally identifiable data with its technology developed in Germany, which has strict user privacy regulations. What it means is that advertisers cannot personally identify the telecom users. At the same time, they can accurately target users of a certain age, sex, location, income, and so on.

Another advantage in this for advertisers, points out Projjol, is that they are more likely to target and get responses from real users instead of bots. “We’re focussed on people-based rather than property-based marketing,” adds Projjol. “Each profile in our database corresponds with an actual telecom customer.”

Zeotap is not the only adtech company out of Berlin that’s making inroads in Asia. Another Berlin-based company, Glispa, counts Flipkart and Alibaba among its clients for products on native ad placement and user engagement. A third major player is AppLift, which acquired Indian startup Bidstalk to add programmatic advertising muscle to its marketing of apps and games.

“When I first moved to Berlin in 2010 to join Fyber (at the time SponsorPay) as a very early employee, the ecosystem was still in its infancy,” recounts Projjol. “What’s happened since then is the growth and successful exit of a number of major ad tech players such as Fyber, Zanox and Sociomantic. These, in turn, have helped spawn a wave of new, more niche ad tech startups.”

Zeotap CEO and co-founder earlier worked for AppLift and also Vodafone. That explains the coming together of adtech and telecom data in Zeotap. And its privacy edge comes from Projjol, who is a certified information privacy technologist from the International Association of Privacy Professionals.

Being an Indo-German startup now also has its advantages, with Zeotap’s tech center in Bangalore housing three-fourths of its total employees. “We’re incredibly happy with our decision to invest in India and look forward to doubling our headcount here this year,” Projjol tells Tech in Asia.

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Vidyartha offers a full-fledged assessment platform that goes beyond the report card of a student and assesses their interests, personality traits, aptitudes and skills

Byju’s

Byju’s, one of the leading edtech startups in India, has acquired Bangalore-based Vidyartha, a data-driven platform offering customised learning guidance to students.

This acquisition strengthens Byju’s efforts to create personalised learning experiences for the students in the K-12 segment.

Vidyartha started as a career guidance platform for students which later started academic profiling of students by partnering with schools. Now, it offers a full-fledged assessment platform that goes beyond the report card of a student and assesses their interests, personality traits, aptitudes and skills through its proprietary assessments. It uses this data to form a personalised learning plan (PLP) for them, with the goal of maximising their performance and scores.

Also Read: Innovating India: Here are 6 emerging edtech trends to watch for in 2017

Commenting on this Byju Raveendran, Founder and CEO of Byju’s said: “Vidyartha has been doing some great work in the learning guidance and career planning space for school students. They have created a unique learning guidance platform that guides students based on their learning paths. As India’s largest ed-tech company, we are constantly innovating to create highly personalised learning products and Vidyartha will supplement our efforts in doing so.”

Vidyartha co-founders Navin Balan and Priya Mohan said in a joint statement: “While Vidyartha focuses on deep profiling students, creating their personalised learning plan and highlighting their learning gaps, Byju’s addresses these gaps and completes the loop.”

Based in Bangalore, Byju is a creator of K-12 learning app which offers adaptive, engaging and effective learning programs for students in classes 4-12 (K-12) and competitive exams like JEE, NEET, CAT, IAS, GRE and GMAT.

Launched in 2015, Byju’s app has 7 million downloads, 330,000 annual paid subscriptions and sees addition of 30,000 students every month. It has an average time of 40 minutes being spent by a student on the app every day from 1,700-plus cities.

Last month, International Finance Corporation (IFC), a member of the World Bank Group, announced an undisclosed investment in Byju’s. This was followed by a US$50 million in funding round, co-led by Sequoia Capital and Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, a fund launched by Facebook Founder Mark Zuckerberg and Dr. Priscilla Chan. This came in six months after Byju’s raised US$75 million from Sequoia and Belgium-based Sofina in March this year — the largest ever funding round by an Indian edtech company.

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India’s Practo, a healthcare startup, has raised US$55 million in series D funding led by China’s Tencent. Three new investors – Thrive Capital, Ru-Net, and Recruit – joined the existing investors in this round, the team announced this afternoon.

Shashank ND, Practo’s founder and CEO, said the funds will be used to foray into health insurance, partnering with leading health insurance providers, and will look at bundling them with its consumer-facing services.

Aggregating over 200,000 doctors across a network of 10,000 hospitals, 8,000 diagnostic centers, and 4,000 wellness and fitness centers in India, Brazil, Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia, and Singapore, the five-year-old startup does everything from connecting patients to doctors, helping clinics manage their customers, and creating customized fitness digital products.

Profitable, sort of

The service gets the majority of its revenues from enterprise clients, while international markets such as Indonesia and Brazil account for 20 percent. Practo’s enterprise segment saw 60 percent growth in 2016, Shashank said. With this, Practo expects to turn profitable in certain segments this year, but it’s still some way away from a company-level break-even.

Practo acquired Bangalore-based analytics firm Enlightiks in December, its fifth acquisition in two years. Three of Practo’s five acquisitions – Quikwell, Insta, and Enlightiks – offer tech solutions for healthcare institutions.

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2016 was dominated by talk of jittery investor sentiment leading to a tougher funding climate for startups. Most VCs felt the era of founders enjoying a cash bonanza was a thing of the past – they’d now be subjected to much more stringent diligence and tougher terms.

There were events that corroborated this view. Several unicorns – such as Flipkart and Ola – saw their valuations slashed significantly. Rocket Internet made a feeble retreat from India and collectively lost almost US$700 million in 2016. Some VCs, however, took a positive spin on the situation and saw it as a sign of a rational ecosystem.

A new report from KPMG about the global venture funding landscape confirms this stance. It says “2016 was a challenging year for venture capital investment.” Worldwide activity declined by almost 25 percent as compared to the same period last year, with 13,665 deals collectively raising a sum of US$127.4 billion.

In 2015 there were 17,992 global venture capital investments with a total value of US$141 billion, according to KPMG.

Asia displays its mettle

The US was responsible for the largest chunk of venture capital activity but also witnessed the highest decline, with capital deployed shrinking a sizeable US$10 billion to settle at US$69.1 billion. KPMG said there were only 8,136 deals in the country last year – the lowest it’s been since 2012.

Europe wasn’t immune either – VC investment declined almost 15 percent as compared to 2015.

Asia, however, was a different story. Total cash invested remained constant at US$39 billion – KPMG notes that it was the only region in the world to display this dynamic. The majority of this money was gobbled up by China – where funding actually increased as compared to last year to a record US$31 billion.

But that might be a double-edged sword. Prominent financial experts in China warn that the desperate gold rush into tech startup funding could “lead to disaster.”

“We are concerned about the consequence of massive flooding of capital from some institutions, including local government-backed policy guidance funds and fund-of-funds,” said Jia Hongbo, general secretary at AMAC, a self-regulatory body supervised by China’s securities regulator.

The only country in Asia to witness a dramatic decline was India. Venture capital firms deployed just US$3.3 billion in 2016. That’s almost a 60 percent drop from last year – 2015 witnessed US$8.2 billion in overall investment.

Reasons for cheer

The consulting firm believes 2017 will be a better year for tech startups in general. It points to the impending IPO of Snap – a blockbuster deal that’s expected in early 2017 – as a driver that may sway the heads of other “mature companies.”

A general mood of optimism could trigger a change in strategy from tech CEOs, with many actively trying to seek an exit this year.

The report predicts that healthtech and biotech startups will attract most VC attention this year as the sector is “ripe with inefficiencies.” Other strong areas of interest will continue to be artificial intelligence, virtual reality, and data analytics.

But KPMG advises caution. “The days of companies being able to burn cash are gone for the foreseeable future,” the report says. Rather, investors will target those whose business model is strong and with a clear path to profitability.

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