New Delhi: Private equity (PE) investment in India in May 2017 jumped 64% in value terms with deals worth $963 million, mainly driven by big ticket investments, says a report.

According to assurance, tax and advisory firm Grant Thornton, there were 67 PE deals worth $963 million in May 2017, while in the same month in 2016, there were 74 such transactions worth $587 million.

For the January-May period, though the number of PE deals declined, but investment values have shown an improvement, indicative of investors beginning to take bigger bets on the Indian economy, more specifically in information technology (IT) and IT-enabled services (ITeS) and retail and consumer sector.

According to the Grant Thornton report, investments in start-ups contributed to 58% of total investment volumes in May 2017

During the first five months of 2017, there were 349 PE deals worth $6,402 million, while in January-May period of 2016, there were 421 such deals worth $5,487 million.

The month of May was dominated by investments in startups which contributed to 58% of total investment volumes. Start-ups in sectors such as enterprise application and infrastructure, travel, transport and logistics, and fintech attracted significant attention from investors and constituted over 51% of startup investment volumes.

According to industry reports, May 2017 witnessed one of the largest foreign direct investment (FDI) in the real estate in the ongoing year with Xander Group’s acquisition of Shriram properties’ Gateway IT SEZ (special economic zone) in Chennai for $350 million.

Other sectors such as IT & ITeS, e-commerce and agriculture sectors also attracted large investments of over $50 million during May.

In terms of sector spread, real estate seems to be gaining interest and contributed more than 40% in terms of deal value. The remaining 60% was mostly contributed by the technology sector.

“All eyes seem to be now on GST (Goods and Services Tax) implementation and its impact on not only trade and economy, but more importantly on investor interest. Since there is now clear visibility on this, we should see good traction in both M&A and PE," Grant Thornton India LLP partner Prashant Mehra said.

Mehra further noted that with India continuing to be favoured destination among foreign investors, the country should hopefully see more in-bound action going forward.

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