The largest PE investment in January-March was $1.1 billion preferential allotment by HDFC to investors.
CHENNAI: With large deals drying up, private equity (PE) companies invested about $3.7 billion (across 133 deals) during the quarter ended March 2018, down 49% compared to $7.3 billion (in 200 transactions) in the same period last year and 29% lower on a sequential basis.
“The latest quarter witnessed only nine PE investments worth $100 million or more compared to 13 such transactions in the same period last year,” said Arun Natarajan, CEO of Venture Intelligence. “Also notable was the fact that Softbank — which dominated 2017 with its mega e-commerce bets on Flipkart, Paytm, Ola and Oyo — did not figure among the top ten deals in Q1 2018,” he added. The only Indian investment by the Japanese giant so far in 2018 has been the relatively small follow-on investment (400 crore or $61 million) in Grofers.
The largest PE investment in January-March was $1.1 billion preferential allotment by HDFC to investors, includin g GIC, KKR and others (Canada Pension Plan OMERS, Carmignac Group and Premji Invest). This was followed by the $275 million investment by TPG Capital in the resultant entity of the merger between Manipal Hospitals and Fortis Healthcare.
On the back of $1.5 billion investment in NBFC companies, BFSI accounted for 51% of the PE investment value pie, attracting $1.9 billion across 14 transactions.
