Big-ticket deals over $500 million and bets by global pension funds have triggered a new high for private equity (PE) firms. According to EY’s monthly PE tracker for the month of October 2017, PE/VC activity posted a record high of $21.8 billion investments made across 496 deals in 2017 till date, surpassing the previous high of $19.6 billion across 767 deals recorded for the full year of 2015. Until now, 2017 has recorded seven such deals aggregating $8.6 billion, of which four deals were of value greater than $1 billion. In contrast, 2016 recorded two deals aggregating $2.5 billion, while 2015 recorded four deals aggregating $2.2 billion. October recorded a 77% increase in the value of investments, while in terms of volume, it decreased 6.6% compared to the same period last year ($2.1 billion across 56 deals in October 2017 vs $1.2 billion across 60 deals in October 2016). On a month-on-month basis, there was an increase of 16.7% in value terms and 19.1% in terms of volume. Two large deals accounted for 71% of the total deal value. The largest deal saw Tencent and Softbank investing $1.1 billion in Ola cabs to be used towards investments into supply and technology, followed by CDPQ, investing $400 million in Logos India Ventures. Till date, 2017 has recorded four investments of value greater than $1 billion compared with just one last year.
In terms of deal type, October recorded the highest value and volume of investments into start-ups in a given month in 2017 ($505 million across 34 deals).
From a sectoral point of view, e-commerce topped the charts with $1.2 billion recorded across 10 deals, followed by Logistics, which recorded the highest ever monthly investment at $408 million across two deals.
