High valuations saw the likes of Flipkart, Snapdeal, Ola, Zomato and InMobi come under investor scrutiny in 2016 and subject to sharp mark downs by both investors and analysts. The heady run of huge promotional spends, successive rounds of funding at ever-increasing valuations and crazy traffic growth saw a pause. 2016 was indeed a year where startups, mature businesses and fund managers took a moment to reflect on the hubris.

With performance under scrutiny and a slowdown in fund raising, investors started consolidating their investments via mergers, reducing costs by pulling back on past excesses and slashing debt.

Big-ticket deals contributed 53% to total private equity investment value in 2016. There were 26 big-ticket deals with a total value of $6.6 billion, compared to 54 deals with a total value of $13.5 billion in 2015.

PE deal activity dropped by 25% from a year earlier to 1309 deals. The value of PE transactions, slumped by 44% to around $12.4 billion from $22 billion as compared to the same period last year. The data excludes Real Estate and Venture debt investments.

Venture capital deals too dropped across stages this year after peaking in 2015 with early stage funding getting significantly hit both by deal activity and value, as investors turned extremely cautious and selective in placing their bets on startups despite adequate funds at their disposal.

Information Technology sector continues to attract a dominant share of private equity investments. The sector witnessed some aggressive deal making in 2016 with 766 deals as investors reposed faith on dot coms.

Big-ticket deals accounted for only 6% of total M&A deal activity this year, while contributed a whopping 92% to total M&A value disclosed in 2016, on the back of outlier deals.

The biggest deal of the year came in the energy sector and involved Russian giant Rosneft. The other top deals involved domestic players in sectors such as Financials, Telecommunication and Industrials.