Investments in Jio Platforms and Reliance Retail account for more than 40 per cent of private equity (PE) and venture capital (VC) investments in 2020 between January-September.

According to the IVCA-EY PE/VC roundup, the January-September period recorded investments worth $ 28.9 billion across 686 deals, on the back of $11.7 billion invested in Jio Platforms and Reliance Retail by a group of PE/VC funds.

Exits recorded $3.6 billion across 100 deals, with exits worth $2 billion in the financial services sector.

Vivek Soni, Partner and National Leader Private Equity Services, EY said, “Headline numbers for PE/VC investments in 2020 till date have been far better than anticipated, primarily because of the large investments in the group entities of Reliance Group (Jio Platforms and Reliance Retail) that happened in 2Q20 and 3Q20”.

“PE/VC investments in 2020 till date (ex-Jio Platform and Reliance Retail deals) closed at $17.2 billion, 53 per cent lower than the same period last year, the lowest in the past four years. Ex-Reliance Group investments, we expect Indian PE/VC investments to close the year at around $24-28 billion,” he said. At $2.9 billion for the Jan-Sept period, buyouts recorded a 79 per cent year on year decline in 2020 while at $3.6 billion, exits were at a six-year low for the January-September period.

Sectors focused on essential goods and services like pharma, telecom, digital technology, edtech, etc. have received a major chunk of PE/VC investments while some of last year’s favourites like infrastructure, real estate and financial services have witnessed significant decline in investment flow.

Indo-Asian News Service