We are big believers in marketplace and enterprise SaaS: Bessemer's Vishal Gupta

Silicon Valley-based venture capital firm Bessemer Venture Partners (BVP) has been a major investor in India, funding startups across sectors such as consumer internet, enterprise technology, mobile, cyber security, cloud computing and SaaS developer platforms, healthcare and IT. In 2015, though BVP invested in several existing portfolio firms it went slow in adding new firms to the basket. The firm, however, expects this year to be different with more new mid-stage funding deals. In this interview with Techcircle.in, Vishal Gupta, managing director of BVP's India office, shares his views about investment opportunities in India and BVP's game plan for 2016. Edited excerpts:

In 2015, we did not see BVP doing too many new deals. Will 2016 be different? The year 2015 was low for us in terms of the volume as well as the number of new deals. We made only one Series-B investment in UrbanClap. We would have liked to do more, but had to slow down due to valuation challenges. We did, however, participate in big follow-on rounds in our portfolio companies. Now that the terms and valuations are getting more reasonable, I believe that the next 12-18 months will present us with a lot of investment opportunities.

Click here for full interview.