Blackstone pips Saudi's PIF to top slot in PE investments in India in 2021

US private equity giant Blackstone overtook Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund Public Investment Fund to claim the top slot among private equity and sovereign funds in terms of investment in India in 2021.

Blackstone invested $4.9 billion in India in 2021, compared with the $3.3 billion that was invested by PIF to win the top slot in 2020, according to the India Private Equity Report of 2022 released by Bain and Company with Indian Venture and Alternate Capital Association on Wednesday. In 2020, with investments of $1.6 billion, Blackstone was eighth in the pecking order.

The PE firm that seems to have slowed down on investment quite sharply in the country is KKR, which fell from the second position in 2020 (when it invested $3 billion) to seventh, with investments of $1.2 billion in 2021. This could also be because KKR had made significant investments in Reliance Jio and Reliance Retail in 2020, which upped its overall numbers. 

The new kid on the block is Advent International, which had a very busy and aggressive year in 2021, that has continued in 2022. It claimed the third spot with investments of $2.4 billion, just behind Carlyle, which put in $3.4 billion for the second space. Advent was not even in the top 10 in 2020. And Carlyle was ninth in the pecking order in 2020.

The PE players that were not amongst the top 10 in 2020 but entered the list in 2021 include Baring, which signed a big deal with Hinduja Global Solutions, and Warburg Pincus, which was involved in deals with Ola Cabs and Parksons Packaging.

What is interesting is that just two sovereign funds – Singapore-based GIC and Temasek – were in the top 10 in 2021. But the big west Asian funds did not splurge in India to get to the top list. These include PIF, ADIA, and Mubadala, which played a key role in investing in India in 2020. Together they put in $7.5 billion in the country.          

Significantly, average deal sizes of the top nine did not go above $1 billion like it did in 2020. The average deal size undertaken by PIF was $1.1 billion. For Blackstone it was $815 million.