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Mumbai: Venture capital funding in start-ups fell 2% globally in April-June from previous quarter, with Asia lagging even as the US continued to see large-scale deal making, according to a report from market intelligence platform CB Insights along with consultancy firm PwC .

Investments in start-ups in the US, Europe, and Asia for April-June totalled $53 billion, about 2% lower than the previous quarter, while the number of deals increased 2% to 3474 for the quarter, says the report titled MoneyTree Report: Q2 2019.

While Asia came close to surpassing North America’s deal activity in Q3 2018, the region’s deal activity has since declined 24% in the current quarter.

Funding in the US was driven by deals of over $100 million mega-rounds driving funding higher. Driving the trend toward bigger deals, US companies raised a record quarterly number of large rounds, with 64 mega-rounds accounting for nearly half of all funding raised, compared with 48 and 51 rounds of previous quarters.

The slowdown in Asia seems to be largely because of a weakening growth in China, where funding has eased after a record breaking decade of fund raise, investments, and valuations. However, funding in India continues to remain strong.

Mint reported on June 30 that start-ups in India have raised a record $3.9 billion from venture capitalists in the six months ended 30 June, as the world’s biggest investors doubled down on their bets in the country buoyed by the Flipkart-Walmart deal last year.

Sector wise, internet companies raised the maximum capital, $12 billion in the quarter, followed by healthcare and mobile and telecom firms, which raised $4.6 billion and $3.1 billion, respectively.

Following the stock market listing of ride hailing firm Uber Inc. , e-cigarette company Juul Labs become the most funded start-up, with $12.6 billion in funding over the years, from investors including Altria Group, the makers of Marlboro cigarettes.

In April-June, exits via mergers and acquisitions (M&A), remained flat at $162 billion, but exits via initial public offerings shot up to $33 billion compared with $15 billion and $16 billion for the preceding two quarters. This was driven by a slew of public market listings in the US- from Uber and social network Pinterest, to workplace collaboration platform Slack and Zoom Video Communications.