Private Equity firms invested about $3.2 Billion across 125 deals during the quarter ended September 2016, according to early data from Venture Intelligence, a research service focused on private company financials, transactions and their valuations. The investment amount was 50% lower than the all time high registered in Q3’15 (which witnessed $6.5 Billion across 224 transactions) and 5% lower than the immediate previous quarter ($3.4 Billion across 135 transactions). The latest figures take the PE investments in the first 9 months of 2016 to $10.6 Billion across 443 transactions – down 23% compared to $13.8 Billion across 594 deals in the same period in 2015. (Note: These figures include Venture Capital investments, but exclude PE investments in Real Estate.)
The latest quarter witnessed 10 PE investments worth $100 million or more to 17 such transactions in the same period last year and 5 during the immediate previous quarter, the Venture Intelligence analysis showed. The largest PE investment announced during Q3’16 was the $300 million raised by Paytm from Taiwan’s Mediatek, China’a Alibaba and VC firm SAIF Partners. The next largest were Goldman Sachs’ $250 million investment in Essel Highways followed by the $175 million raised by messenger firm Hike from China’s Tencent, Taiwan’s Foxconn and US-based Tiger Global.
IT & ITES companies accounted for 36% of the PE investment pie in Q3’16 attracting $1.1 Billion across 65 transactions. The value of IT & ITES investments in Q3’16 was down 68% from the $3.6 Billion across 132 deals in the same period in 2015. However investments in BFSI have more than doubled following $100M+ investments in India Infoline Finance, National Stock Exchange and Hero Fincorp.
