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Private equity investment in the nine-month period ending September totalled $8.6 billion across 317 investments, a 21 per cent increase over $6.4 billion (270 investments) reported in the same period last year.
This was due to increase in the deal size. There were five PE investments worth over $100 million during third quarter, with three of them over $200 million, according to a study.
The value of PE investments year-to-date in 2011 has already surpassed the $8.2 billion invested across 358 transactions in the entire of 2010, says a report by the Chennai-based Venture Intelligence study. These figures exclude PE investments in real estate.
PE firms invested $2.2 billion across 98 deals during the quarter ended September. However, this investment amount was lower than the corresponding period last year, which witnessed $2.3 billion being invested across 111 deals and $2.9 billion across 122 deals reported in the preceding quarter.
Big investments
Some of the largest investments during the period included The Blackstone Group-owned Sithe Global Power's $261 million investment in SKS Chhattisgarh Power Generation; Blackstone's direct Rs 500 crore ($111 million) investment in Visa Power and Goldman Sachs' Rs1,000 crore (about $204 million) commitment to ReNew Wind Power.
The energy industry emerged as the favourite destination for PE capital in terms of investment amount during the third quarter attracting $823 million across 16 transactions.
IT & ITES companies came in next attracting $437 million across 29 transactions. The largest deal in the IT & ITES industry was India- and US-based mobile advertising network InMobi's $200 million investment from SoftBank.
This was followed by the $40 million raised by online group buying service Snapdeal.com from Bessemer Ventures with participation from existing investors IndoUS Ventures and Nexus Ventures. Blackstone invested about $33 million in financial inclusion-focused tech firm FINO.
Interest in infrastructure services firm operating in the roads and water projects helped the engineering and construction industry attracted $279 million across 8 investments during Q3 across companies such as Soma Enterprise (from JP Morgan), HCC Concessions (from the Xander Group) and GVR Infra Projects (from IDFC Private Equity).
Exit activity
PE firms obtained exit routes for their investments in 20 Indian companies during Q3, including one IPO (that of Tree House Education). This compares to 26 exits (including 3 IPOs) in the same period in 2010 and 17 exits (including one IPO) in the immediate previous quarter, the study said.
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