Infra, finance sector deals break fall in PE investments

Private Equity investors bet $15.2 billion across 620 deals (and 585 individual companies) in 2016 making it the second biggest year for such investments in India (by both value and volume) after 2015 (which had witnessed $17.3 Billion being invested across 775 transactions and 683 companies). These figures from Venture Intelligence, India’s longest serving research service focused on private company financials, transactions and valuations, include Venture Capital investments, but exclude PE investments in Real Estate. 

Infrastructure investments - notably led by Canada headquartered investors - dominated the list of big ticket investments during 2016. Canada’s Brookfield committed $1.65 billion to buy a majority stake in telecom tower firm Reliance Infratel; pension fund CDPQ along with others invested $850 million in Tata Power’s SPV Resurgent Power; while Fairfax Holdings invested over $300 million each in Bangalore International Airport and Chennai-based Sanmar Chemicals. 

IT & ITES companies, which attracted $4.7 billion (across 359 transactions) in 2016, saw their share of the PE investment pie decline sharply to 31% (from 45% in 2015). BFSI (Banking, Financial Services & Insurance) companies that attracted over $2.7 billion (across 53 transactions) during 2016, gained the most YoY attracting 18% of the pie (up from 15% in 2015).