CHENNAI: As India witnesses a hectic pace of activity around entrepreneurship, the location in which you start your company may not play a major role in its scaling up, as per IIT Madras’ tenth annual Indian Venture Capital and Private Equity report released on Saturday.The study found that while cities like Bengaluru or Mumbai do have a higher chance of raising capital in the first round, there isn’t a major difference in the number of enterprises that raised successive rounds of capital across cities.169 Bengaluru-based startups raised second round of funding, and this figure stands at 125 for Mumbai, 143 for Delhi, and 133 for other cities.Commenting on the conclusions drawn, Prof. Thillai Rajan, Department of Management Studies, IIT Madras, said, “While companies in cities like Bangalore are able to get more venture funding initially, the advantage stops there. After that, in terms of exits and returns, there are no major differences between [companies in] different cities.” Once a venture is mature, it is only performance that impacts its continuance, he added.With close to 1.26 million companies created during 2000 to 2017 (the period of the study), the report found that only 0.5% have been able to raise venture capital investment. Among these, Chennai startups raised the highest average amounts of funding in first round at Rs. 590 lakh, though the number of Chennai-based startups funded was found to be lowest.Further, the proportion of companies formed in smaller cities and towns increased from 65% to 76%, and correspondingly, count of companies formed in the major tier 1 cities has fallen from 35% to 24%, signaling the penetration of the entrepreneurship culture to the interior regions of the country.The average returns realized by investors from investing in startups was found to be 13.25% with around 40% of the firms successful in delivering returns higher than this mean. Sectorally, technology startups emerged as the pick for venture capitalists as software industry, financial technology, and consumer products comprised 63% of companies that received venture funding.The report analysed publicly disclosed venture capital and private equity deals in India during 2000-2017 period to arrive at the findings, and was released during TiECON Chennai 2018, an annual entrepreneurship conference organized by TiE Chennai.