Private debt market in India set to grow more, says Standard Chartered

By Divya Patil
 

Standard Chartered Plc sees private debt market in India expand as opportunities in both performing and high-yield credit have grown significantly.
 

A prolonged winter for the startup ecosystem and challenges to raise money from the stock market have led corporates to explore alternative, hybrid style of funding, Ankur Khurana, Standard Chartered’s co-head, corporate, commercial & institutional banking, client coverage, told Bloomberg TV’s David Inglis and Haslinda Amin in an interview Friday. This has bolstered overall growth of private credit, she added.

A growing list of global asset managers are setting up credit funds in India as they look to fill the funding gap, which was created after a shadow banking crisis spooked India’s financial sector about five years back. 

India-focused assets under management in private debt - the business of lending directly to companies - nearly doubled to $15.5 billion as of December 2022 from a year earlier, according to the most recent numbers from financial data provider Preqin.

Khurana said the space “will see a lot more transactions, not just large size ones but a lot of smaller or mid corporate companies,” adding the lender had closed one of the largest private credit deal earlier this year, and that was just the “tip of the iceberg.”