EQT Group plans to invest $50 billion in India by 2030: Jean Eric Salata, Chairman

MUMBAI: Swedish buyout group EQT is planning to invest $50 billion in the next four years in India, led by aggressive rollouts of data centres and key infrastructure projects such as renewable power.

In private equity, the firm is looking to deploy at least $2 billion every year till 2030, buying out companies from industrial manufacturing to pharma, financial services and even sports franchises, EQT’s leadership told ET.

That $50 billion is about double the $26 billion it has deployed in the country since 1998, through 30 investments.


“It’s a big number,” Jean Eric Salata, the Chilean-born chairman of EQT Group, said in an interview. “It’s a much bigger number than what I would have told you 18-24 months ago because of the significant capital intensity of the data centre and energy businesses.”

EQT-backed EdgeConneX in 2020 as cloud demand drove the first wave of hyperscale data centre growth, since accelerated because of AI. The following year, the US company formed a 50:50 JV with Adani Group to build and deliver 1-3 GW of green data centre capacity in India. It is developing hyperscale and edge data centres in major hubs such as Chennai, Navi Mumbai, Noida, Vizag and Hyderabad.

Returns Hit a Record, says EQT's Salata

The alliance has announced a $10 billion capital commitment in the last 1.5 years to build a gigawatt scale infrastructure.

“If you look at the quantum of investment in data centres, including contracted and under construction, that number alone, just in data centres, will probably be $10 billion since December 2024,” said Salata. The plan is to ramp up capacity to 3GW by 2030, involving capex that is “triple that amount ($10 billion).”

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However, in sync with Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s long-term policies and plans for Viksit Bharat in 2047, EQT’s goals are even higher. “There’s an aspirational plan to go even beyond, to 5GW. That is, by far, the area that we believe we have the highest conviction on right now and where there’s tremendous demand and still offers very attractive returns for our investors,” said Salata, a day after meeting Modi in New Delhi.

The firm also had a joint venture with Temasek of Singapore and created a 4.7GW renewable energy platform, O2 Power, which it sold to JSW Energy in 2025 for $1.4 billion. Since then, it has backed the same management team to start another greenfield green energy platform called Resolven, following a carveout of the local business of Zelestra Group.

In India for the 20th anniversary of the firm’s Mumbai office opening, Salata agreed there is a flight toward quality even in the PE industry — with clear bifurcation and consolidation — after a period of unbridled growth. That has prompted much more scrutiny from pension funds, financial institutions, insurers, sovereign wealth funds and endowments that sponsor PE groups as limited partners (LPs).

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Returns hit a record last year, said Salata. “We had $40 billion of distributions returned to our clients. That’s equivalent to about 30% of net asset value (NAV), which is higher than even in the good times,” he said. A reasonable target is to “go sort of 20% or thereabouts. But I think the industry average is closer to 10% and we were at 30% of capital return. So that’s helped us raise funds.”

In April, EQT raised a record $15.6 billion BPEA IX, making it the region’s largest private equity fund, despite the global volatility fuelled by the Iran crisis. It saw 75 new investors coming on board to back the firm’s strategy to control deals in sectors including technology, healthcare and services.

Globally, it’s one of private equity’s larger firms, driving a fundraising revival that has left many smaller rivals trailing. Fundraising for the overall sector surpassed $260 billion in the first half of 2026, putting it on track to raise 17% more this year than last year’s $447 billion, according to data analysis firm PitchBook.

Among just four bulge bracket funds — Blackstone, Bain, KKR, EQT — close to $50 billion is waiting to be deployed in Asia. Typically, India deployment for most of them accounts for a third of Asia funds. Still, the team in India is of the view that the opportunity set is substantial.

“If you look at the country at close to $4 trillion, growing at 7%, the total buyout volumes in India last year were less than $15 billion,” said Hari Gopalakrishnan, co-head of private capital in Asia at EQT. “If you assume that $15 billion returns at least 2x by 2030, the market will be $50 billion. We’re still scratching the surface of buyouts in India. Secondary deals–one PE selling to another–alone will be $30 billion.”

In the last two years, the firm has evaluated transactions worth $90 billion in India, Gopalakrishnan said. Interesting sub-sectors are cropping up in pharma and financial services such as contract manufacturing or asset management. Buyouts will remain the firm’s DNA but new pools are being used for growth equity investments such as in Nothing, an Android phone brand with a strong India footprint.

After a $7-billion investment blitz since 2023 across education NBFCs, fertility chains, healthcare-focussed tech services and digital product engineering, the firm has been relatively quiet of late. Industry peers said large bets on tech services and BPOs — Virtusa, Sagility and Atain in 2021-23 — are facing large-scale AI disruption.

The local management, however, said there are enough opportunities for these companies to work with enterprises and make them ready for AI. The $300-billion Indian IT services industry is growing at 5%, Gopalakrishnan said. “Just as we went through the digital wave 15 years ago, where everything became digital and we started tracking digital as proportionate to revenue, we are tracking AI as a proportionate to revenue as well,” he said. “We are getting enterprises ready for AI. That is the fastest-growing part of the business and will really lift the growth rates across the industry.”

Salata said technology services companies are probably in the best position to diffuse AI into the enterprise. “The biggest bottleneck today in AI adoption is not technology but business workflows and process implementation,” he said. “And this is where we see tremendous growth potential for our portfolio companies.”

Sports is another new area of focus.

Last month, EQT bought a majority stake in Melbourne Storm, its first direct investment in a sports after IMG Academy — a sports education brand — in 2023 and a six-a-side football competition called the Baller League.

“Sports is entertaining as well” but the “economic profile of each sport is different,” said Nicholas Macksey, co-head, private capital, Asia, at EQT. Earlier this year, EQT unsuccessfully bid for Indian Premier League franchise Royal Challengers Bengaluru.

“Unfortunately we didn’t prevail. But it is a good industry and was a good asset,” said Salata. “We would have liked to have won that.”