Indian Inc signed about 360 Private Equity (PE) deals aggregating to $8.9 billion in the January-October period this year, registering an increase of 33 per cent as against 345 transactions worth $6.7 billion during the corresponding period a year ago.
According to a report by global assurance, tax and advisory firm Grant Thornton, the total value of PE deals in the first 10 months of 2013 increased by 14 per cent over the same period last year.
The rise in the total value was primarily driven by deals in real estate, IT/ITeS and healthcare sectors and in the M&A space, October, 2013 saw another large outbound deal in oil and gas space.
“There seems to be a pick-up in deal due diligence activity (especially, inbound deals) but deals are taking longer time to close,” said Raja Lahiri, India Partner, Transaction Advisory Services, Grant Thornton.
He added that government regulations relaxing FDI norms in sectors like retail, media and insurance as well as the recently proposed M&A policies for telecom sector, is good for the deal making environments.
While the top five deals accounted for 63 per cent of the total PE deal values, IT and ITeS space garnered over 34 per cent of the total deals with the sector witnessing 18 deals worth $281 million, followed by pharma, healthcare (26% with $216 million), real estate (22%, $177 million), retail (7%, $56 million) and media and entertainment (4%, $30 mn).
Red Fort Capital’s $161 million investment in Lotus Greens Developers was termed as the PE deal of the month of October
The other major deals include, e-commerce major Flipkart receiving additional $160 million from Morgan Stanley Investment Management and others, followed by American PE fund KKR investing `550 crore in PCR, the holding company for the Apollo Hospitals Group.
Other deals that make up the top five deals include Warburg Pincus’ 30 per cent stake acquisition in Biba Apparels for $56.45 mn and Actis $48 mn investment in Symbiotec Pharmalab.