PE, VC deals touch record high of $21.8 bn in Jan-Oct: EY

Private equity and venture capital deals in India touched a record high with investments worth USD 21.8 billion so far this year, mainly driven by big-ticket transactions, according to a new EY report.
PE/VC investments in January-October 2017 recorded USD 21.8 billion across 496 deals, surpassing the previous record of USD 19.6 billion across 767 transactions in 2015.
This increase has been primarily driven by a significant number of large deals worth USD 500 million or above, and many transactions involved big bets by global pension funds, EY said in the report.
From January till October this year, PE/VC investments recorded seven big ticket deals aggregating USD 8.6 billion, of which four deals were greater than USD 1 billion.

"October 2017 was another stellar month for the Indian PE/VC sector. 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," EY Partner and Leader for PE Advisory Vivek Soni said.
In October, two large deals accounted for 71 per cent of the total deal value.

The largest deal saw Tencent and Softbank invest USD 1.1 billion in Ola cabs that will be used for investments in supply and technology, followed by CDPQ investing USD 400 million in Logos India Ventures that will be used to acquire logistics assets.

"PE/VC investments so far this year have eclipsed the highs seen in 2015, already making 2017 a record year for both investments and exits," Soni said adding that "with two months to go for the year-end, we expect to close the year with PE/VC investments 25 per cent to 30 per cent higher than the 2015 record levels".
Moreover, with capital markets expected to remain buoyant in the medium-term, strong PE/VC backed exits via IPO's are expected to continue unabated, he added.