PE activity zooms 77% in October: Report

Private equity (PE) activity in the country rose by 77 per cent to $2.1 billion worth of transactions in October, a report said on Tuesday.

According to EY's monthly PE deal tracker for October 2017, the industry witnessed $2.1 billion worth of transactions spread across 56 deals.

In October 2016, the country's PE activity recorded 60 deals worth $1.2 billion.

On a month-on-month basis, there was an increase of 16.7 per cent in value terms and 19.1 per cent in terms of volume.

The month under review also saw two large deals which accounted for 71 per cent of the total deal value.

The largest deal saw Tencent and Softbank invest $1.1 billion in Ola Cabs that would be used for investments in supply and technology, followed by CDPQ investment of $400 million in Logos India Ventures that would be used to acquire logistics assets.

"October 2017 was another stellar month for the Indian PE/VC sector," said Vivek Soni, Partner and Leader for PE Advisory, EY.

"The festive month saw a couple of cracker deal announcements which helped take the PE/VC investments for 2017 past the previous record high of 2015."

On a year-to-date basis, the report disclosed that the domestic PE investment values increased to $21.8 billion across 496 deals, surpassing the previous record high of $19.6 billion across 767 deals in 2015.

--IANS

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