on Jul 01, 2021)Chennai: Despite the second wave’s toll on the economy, 2021 is taking shape as a landmark year for Private Equity-Venture Capital (PE-VC) industry as PE-VC investments in India grew 33% year-on-year during the first six months of 2021.
The first half (January-June) of 2021 saw investments of $27.1 billion (across 442 deals) in the first half of 2021 compared to $20.4 Billion (across 433 deals) during the same period last year, data from research firm Venture Intelligence, shows.
A major chunk of the total PE investments flew into IT & ITES and healthcare benefiting from increased digital adoption and growth opportunities in these sectors during the pandemic. The half year period (H1-2021) also saw creation of 16 unicorns compared to just three unicorns in H1-2020. Despite a dip in May, the April-June quarter (Q2-2021) saw $14.3 billion worth investments across 215 deals registering a 12% sequential increase compared to $12.8 billion across 227 deals in Jan-March. Q2-2021 witnessed 33 mega deals ($100M+ rounds) worth $11.5 billion, compared to 12 such investments in the same period last year. 11 companies turned unicorns in this quarter attracting close to $5.1 billion worth of investments.
“While April saw over $7 billion being invested on the back of mega deals in the tech sector, the intensive second wave of the pandemic saw deal value in May dip to just $2.7 Billion,” Arun Natarajan, Founder of Venture Intelligence, said. “It is good to see a quick resurgence in the pace of investments in June [which saw $4.2 billion invested across 79 deals],” he added.
The $2.8 billion bid by Blackstone to buy 75% stake in IT & BPO services firm
accounted for 20% of PE-VC investment pie in Q2. The other top deals of the quarter included the $900 million acquisition of Infogain by Apax Partners and the $800 million investment in food delivery platform Swiggy by Prosus Ventures QIA, Falcon Edge Capital, and others.
Sectorally, the pandemic’s impact on digitisation was a tailwind for IT/ITeS companies that accounted for $14.4 billion of the total investment pie in the first half of 2021.
