NEW DELHI: Private Equity (PE) investment
While PE investments had already surpassed the previous high – US$ 24.3 Billion across 734 deals in 2017 – in the first nine months of 2018, the mega investments in Consumer Internet & Mobile startups such as Swiggy and Byjus towards the year-end, helped the 2018 total vault by 36% year-on-year. These figures exclude PE investments in Real Estate.
The year witnessed 81 PE investments worth $100 million or more (accounting for 77% of the total investment value during the period), compared to 47 such transactions in 2017. Of these, 40 were larger than $200 million each (by themselves accounting for 60% of the total value) – compared to 30 such investments in the year ago period, the Venture Intelligence data shows.
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Largest PE Investments – 2018
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Company
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Investors
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Amount
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Toll Road Projects
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Macquarie
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$1,487 M
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UPL
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TPG, ADIA
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$1,200 M
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HDFC
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KKR, GIC, Others
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$1,062 M
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Swiggy
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Naspers, Tencent, Others
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$1,000 M
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Oyo
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SoftBank, Others
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$1,000 M
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RCOM Enterprise Bix
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I-Squared Capital
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$1,000 M
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Vivtera
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Warburg Pincus
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$1,000 M
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Star Health Insurance
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WestBridge, Madison India,
Rare Enterprises, Others |
$1,000 M*
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*Publicly-reported value
By Industry
Led by the $1 Billion investments in Swiggy (from So
Food delivery app maker Swiggy had started the year with a $100 million investment led by Naspers, followed it up with mid-year $210 million raise (co-led by Naspers and DST Global) and polished the year off with a $1 Billion investment (led by Naspers and Tencent).
Hotel chain Oyo raised $800 million (with an additional commitment for $200 million) led by SoftBank Vision Fund.Paytm raised $445 million (from SoftBank and Alibaba for its E-commerce business, Paytm Mall) and $356 million from Berkshire Hathaway at the parent company (One 97 Communications) level.
Other large ticket IT & ITeS investments in 2018 inclu
Other notable Indian tech companies that attracted rounds of US$100 million or more during the year included payments enabler Pine Labs, event ticketing service Bookmyshow, regional language social app ShareChat, music service Gaana.com and fantasy gaming startup Dream11.
The year saw 8 new Unicorn companies being minted,including five – Oyo, PolicyBazaar, Swiggy, Paytm Mall and Byjus – in the B2C segment.
The B2B entrants included, apart from BillDesk (which is focused on enabling online payments for utilities), SaaS startup Freshworks (via a $100 million round from existing investors Sequoia Capital, Accel Partners and CapitalG) and two-year-old B2B E-commerce platform Udaan ($225 million from existing investors – DST Global and Lightspeed Ventures).
Financials Services companies, led by the HDFC and Star Health Insurance, attracted 72 investments worth $5.9Billion and included 17 de
The two Registrar and Transfer Agent business investments,which had faced regulatory hurdles in 2017 – the Karvy–General Atlantic deal and the CAMS–Warburg Pincus one– were green signalled in the second half of 2018.
“The mid-year Walmart-Flipkart deal clearly re-energizedinternational investors’ appetite for mega bets in Indian Internet & Mobile companies. This has helped offset the slowdown in investments in sectors like Financial Services, Manufacturing and Infrastructure towards the year end triggered by nervousness in the public markets and the IL&FS scare,” remarked Arun Natarajan, Founder of Venture Intelligence. “Whether the PE investment tally of 2019 can outdo the highs of 2018 seems set to hinge substantially on Global Economic trends in the New Year and the outcome of the upcoming National Elections,” he added.
