via Paul Kedrosky of Infectious Greed and MarketWatch stories
specifically in the IT sector, it says
The report showed 54% of all venture deals in India were for companies in the Information Technology (IT) categories, as 31 rounds were completed in the first nine months of the year, accounting for more than $327 million worth of investment.
Early stage deals accounted for 63% of all investment activity in India in the first three quarters of 2007 with $490 million invested in 42 first rounds and three seed rounds.
a few deductions
- median round size in IT seems to be around $5M (Rs.20 crores). the average calculates up to $10M, so i assume there were a few very large rounds.
- $113 million invested in 17 Information Services (including web). crude math, but at 63%, roughly $71M would’ve been invested in 10 early-stage rounds.
- so extrapolating into a yearly rate, you’d have about $95M over about 15 rounds in 2007. if the aggregate investment gets to a $1B mark in 2008
you we are looking at this bottom-line -
$125M would be invested in about 20 early stage web-based start-ups. and that’d be just organized vc funding. i know there is tons of informal angel funding and good-will around.
besides: just because we love to compete with china, here’s the result of some web searching (multi-tasking at work, of course) : China VC funding, forbes story. interestingly, early stage startups accounted for similar share, (62%), spreading $880M over 106 deals., and median is almost double.
desis have a long way to go 
. if you are in the market, best of luck!