The Venture Intelligence Blog

From the Business Today article : "The consumer healthcare segment is growing at around 18 per cent, almost 1.5 times the rate at which the FMCG sector is growing," points out Nikhil Vora, Managing Director at brokerage house IDFCSSKI. Rising fees of medical professionals, an increasing penchant for self-medication, aggressive advertising and increasing faith in traditional medicinal systems like ayurveda are driving this growth. ..."Companies like Amrutanjan, Zandu and Paras are in demand because they have established brands and a wide product portfolio," says Vora. At eight times its sales, Paras may have been valued richly, but analysts say it has commanded such a price because there are not too many opportunities for inorganic growth in this lucrative segment. ...A major attraction of OTC pharma is the margins, which are almost double those in FMCG. "On an average, the operating margins in OTC pharma could vary between 20 and 25 per cent compared to 12 to 1...

ET has a profile following the Paras Pharma buyout. Actis bought an ownership stake in Punjab Tractors,the tractor company owned by the Punjab government."When we started investing in India,India was entirely a growth market," says Trivedi, who heads the South Asian operations of Actis."We started doing buyouts because we realised many promoter families were no longer interested in running their businesses." Yet,buyouts have been few and far between,even for Actis.According to Venture Intelligence,an aggregator of data on deals,PE funds have done 2,085 transactions in India between 2005 and 2010.Of these,just 76,or 3.6%,have been buyouts;the remaining 2,009 have been growth deals. Three PE firms stand out in the buyout space: Actis,ICICI Venture and Blackstone.Of the three,Actis leads with eight buyouts with a total deal value of $495 million.That buyout number is a fraction of the 37 deals Actis has closed in India. ...Trivedi,58,is the face of Actis in India. But...