Private Equity, Venture Capital investment increases 26 per cent to USD 10 billion in Q1 2019
Private Equity and Venture Capital firms invested a record $10.1 billion across 159 deals during the quarter ended March 2019, according to data from Venture Intelligence.
The investment value increased 26 per cent compared to the $8 billion across 208 transactions recorded in the same period in 2018 and 39 per cent higher than the immediate previous quarter that had witnessed $7.3 billion being invested across 178 transactions.
The latest quarter witnessed 23 PE investments worth $100 million or more with 6 of them $500 million or above compared to 17 such transactions in the same period last year.
Infrastructure related companies, especially in the energy, roads and telecom, accounted for 48 per cent of the investment value during the period accounting for $4.9 billion across 16 deals, compared to $3.7 billion across 13 deals in Q1’18.
The largest investment reported during the quarter was canadian asset management firm Brookfield’s $1.8 billion acquisition of Pipeline Infrastructure India — which owns the 1,400 km natural gas pipeline from Kakinada to Bharuch — from Reliance Industries.
The second largest investment was the $715 million investment by Singapore sovereign wealth fund GIC in mobile services company Bharti Airtel.
Among other top investments, global tech investor SoftBank invested in e-commerce focused logistics firm Delhivery and omni-channel baby products retailer FirstCry.
Banking, Financial Services and Insurance was the second most favored destination for PE investors in Q1’19 attracting $2.2 billion across 20 PE investments.
Among the top investments in the sector was Carlyle’s acquisition of a 9 per cent stake in SBI Life Insurance for $653 million.
IT & ITeS companies came in third attracting $1.7 billion across 86 transactions. Among the larger investments in the sector, apart from FirstCry, were AION Capital’s buyout of InterGlobe Enterprises’ IT and Back Office unit for $230 million; Apax Partners’ $200 million investment fractal analytics and e-grocer BigBasket’s $150 million funding led by Mirae Asset Management, Alibaba and
CDC Group.
“The sheer size of bets in the Infrastructure sector this close to the National Elections speaks to the long term investors that have been attracted to India in recent years,” said Arun Natarajan, Founder, Venture Intelligence.
“While average PE-VC deal sizes are up sharply, the fact that this has been accompanied by a rather steep fall in the number or volume of investments indicates selectivity,” he added.