India offers unprecedented breadth of investment opportunity: Warburg Pincus

A rapidly growing economy has enriched the investing landscape for private equity firms such as Warburg Pincus in India with an unprecedented breadth of opportunity that outshines the rich multiples, said its senior leadership.

Read more: Warburg Pincus chiefs say the biggest shift in India is convincing business families to let go of emotionally held firms

“The Indian market has two cycles, it's either expensive or very expensive. But the potential is limitless,” said Jeffery Perlmann, the 43-year-old CEO, also the youngest corner office occupant at global firms of similar size and scale. “The biggest mistakes we made in India are not our investments but exits. The upsides that some of our portfolio companies have enjoyed after our exit have really surprised us.”


Warburg Pincus kicked off the PE wave in India, backing first-generation entrepreneurs such as Sunil Mittal’s Bharti Airtel, HDFC Ltd and Uday Kotak-led Kotak Mahindra Bank in the mid-1990s.

“Our journey coincided with the beginning of the economic liberalisation agenda,” said Chip Kaye, who led Warburg for more than 20 years before stepping back in 2024 to become chairman alongside Timothy Geithner, former US treasury secretary. An Indophile, Kaye is credited with leading Warburg into Asia in 1994. He was subsequently instrumental in setting up the India office. Perlman spent almost 14 years in Asia, helping expand Warburg’s presence in the continent, especially in real estate.

The low-profile Warburg has refrained from a US listing unlike Wall Street peers such as Blackstone and KKR and is among the most successful PE firms, generating over $100 billion in profit for investors since its 1971 inception. Outside the US, India is the largest PE destination for the firm, deploying over $10 billion across more than 80 plus investments.

“To me the biggest change in India is to be able to convince business families to let go of enterprises that they have been emotionally attached to. That’s a real evolution,” said Kaye.

It helps, he said, to be the most referenceable PE firm in the country.

“To have three-quarters or more of the opportunity set as majority control or buyout type transactions is not something I probably would have believed 15 years ago, despite having lived and worked in Asia for as long,” Perlman said. “Our ability to consistently show that we can partner with entrepreneurs or have our hands on the steering wheel alongside a professional management is unique.”