August 2021 saw total M&A transaction valued at $867 million across 37 deals, as opposed to August 2020 (30 deals, valued collectively at $908 million).
Private equity and venture capital firms recorded 182 deals, valued at $ 7.6 billion driven mainly by high value investments in Indian companies and unicorns, supported by confidence in recovery, lucrative opportunities in the start-up space and promising entrepreneurial talent.
“Domestic consolidation led to 68 per cent of the deal volumes in M&A. Unicorns, such as Byju’s, Unacademy and Dream Sports sealed some of the M&A deals. As improvement in industrial indicators and external demand unfold, we hope economic activities would normalise in the coming months driven by pent-up demand, ongoing vaccination drive, support from policy mix and a resurgence in global growth,” said Shanthi Vijetha, Partner, Growth, Grant Thornton Bharat.
The star sector of the month continued to be tech followed by education, pharmaceutical and energy sectors. The bulk of the deals were in IT solutions, data analytics, cleantech, pharmaceuticals, e-commerce, consumer retail, digital healthcare, fin-tech and ed-tech companies, whose products and services have seen strong demand during the pandemic.
The month also saw the birth of seven new unicorns. This trend indicates that both, the fund inflow and start-ups with a valuation of $1 billion, are likely to continue to grow and expand through the year. Indian start-up ecosystem witnessed fund inflow of $1.4 billion, as reflected by the positive funding momentum with 115 deals (63 per cent share of the PE volumes). With this, the sector topped both the volume and values chart for the month.
 "India Inc sees 219 deals worth $8.4 bn in August, record volumes since 2005")
