India recorded $17.5 bn PE investments in 2015: PwC

Private equity investments in India touched a record high of USD 17.5 billion in 2015 across 685 deals, breaching the previous high of USD 14.7 billion recorded in 2007, a PwC report says. According to the report, PE investments (excluding real estate deals) till December 14, this year stood at USD 17.5 billion, registering a jump of 34 percent over calender year 2014, which saw USD 13 billion invested across 560 deals. The surge in PE investments this year was largely owed to the e-commerce sector, which saw deals worth USD 5.3 billion across 290 deals.

The other sectors, which outperformed this year were, financial services and healthcare, which contributed deals worth USD 2.4 billion and USD 1.58 billion, respectively. "Year 2015 has been a good year for PE all around and seems to be carrying momentum into the next year," PwC India leader - Private Equity Sanjeev Krishan said. Krishan further said an enabling regulatory regime and a facilitating business environment would help both the seekers and providers of capital.

"The government of the day appears to realise and is keen to provide the platform. This would hopefully spur investments into India in a bigger way then 2015 and hopefully they would create another record year for themselves in 2016," he added. The report noted the government's focus on making it easier for foreign investors to do business in India would help from a perception stand-point and needs to be backed by real reform.

"The silver lining for India is that the rest of the BRIC's are not doing too well at the moment and India's macros are looking good, with the current account and fiscal deficit at acceptable levels, relatively stable rupee, inflation at sub 5 percent and most importantly in a declining interest rate regime, which should encourage private investment as demand picks up," the report added. Meanwhile, the year 2015 also saw exits worth USD 8.2 billion, which was more than double of USD 4 billion of exits in the previous year. Prior to this year, 2010 had seen record high number of exits at USD 6.3 billion.