'PE investments halve to USD3.2 bn in Jul-Sep quarter'

Private equity investments for the September quarter halved to about USD 3.2 billion from a year ago, according to early data from Venture Intelligence.

In July-September this year, there were 125 deals worth USD 3.2 billion while it was USD 6.5 billion across 224 transactions in the same quarter last year.

On a quarter-on-quarter basis, the deal value was lower by 5 percent as the April-June quarter of this year had witnessed 135 transactions worth USD 3.4 billion.

PE investments in the first nine months of this year amounted to USD 10.6 billion across 443 transactions, down 23 percent compared with USD 13.8 billion across 594 deals in the same period in 2015.

These figures include venture capital investments, but exclude PE ones in real estate. The number of PE investments worth USD 100 million or more in the September quarter was 10, the Venture Intelligence analysis showed.

The largest announced during July-September was the USD 300 million raised by Paytm from Taiwan's Mediatek, China's Alibaba and VC firm SAIF Partners.

The second largest was Goldman Sachs' USD 250 million investment in Essel Highways followed by the USD 175 million raised by messenger firm Hike from China's Tencent, Taiwan's Foxconn and US-based Tiger Global.

Sector-wise, IT and ITeS companies accounted for 36 percent of the PE investment pie in the September quarter, attracting USD 1.1 billion across 65 transactions. Value-wise, the investments fell 68 percent from the USD 3.6 billion across 132 deals a year ago.

However, investments in BFSI have more than doubled following over USD 100 million infusion in India Infoline Finance, National Stock Exchange and Hero Fincorp, the report added.