MUMBAI: Despite the lingering funding winter, private equity and venture capital (PE/VC) investments have surged to their highest levels in a decade in terms of number of deals at 1,761 between January and November this year, surpassing the previous record of 1,726 deals in 2021 while in value terms the same jumped 54% to $34 billion.
While the deal volumes are at decadal high with 1,761 transactions, in terms of value, financial sponsors pumped in a $34 billion during the January-November period, which is a full 54% more than the $22 billion they had deployed in 2024, according to the data tabulated by Equirus Capital.
The year also saw a rise in average deal size, which grew from $34.4 million in 2024 to $41.6 million in 2025, but sill way lower than the pre-2022 period when the funding winter began. Notably, the country has consistently recorded over 1,000 PE/VC deals every year for the past 10 years, underlining the depth and maturity of its investment ecosystem, Bhavesh Shah, managing director and head of investment banking at Equirus Capital, said Friday.
While in 2015 there were 1,397 deals were closed, 2018 saw it dipping to 1,031, which rose further to 1,726 in 2021 and dipped further to 1,170 in 2024 and soared to a record of 1,761 so far this year. "PE/VE investments have already seen a 54% jump in the first 11 months to $34 billion compared to the whole of 2024 when it was only $22 billion.
With large new funds being raised by PEs on the back of record exits, we believe the country has shown its resilience as a market that offers financial investors multiple viable routes for exit once they have managed to scale up and grow their investee companies," said Shah.
Smaller deals continue to dominate activity, with transactions up to $10 million accounting for over 30% of total deal volume over the past five years, he said, adding mid-market deals of $10–25 million and $25–50 million have expanded their share significantly—from over 20% in 2020 to over 40% in 2025, reflecting investor appetite for scalable, early-growth opportunities.
The IT and consumer discretionary sectors remain the biggest beneficiaries, attracting over 50% of total investments both by value and volume, underscoring the country’s digital transformation and rising domestic consumption. “The depth of the capital markets is reflected from over 60% of the exit volume in calendar 2025 being accounted for by public markets either by way of IPOs or block deals,” added Shah.