Multibillion-dollar deals fuel pickup in India's mergers & acquisitions activity

After a lull earlier this year, activity in mergers and acquisitions has picked up in India, led by multibillion-dollar cross-border deals and the involvement of global private equity funds and local firms.

Increasingly savvy conglomerates are looking at longer-term transformational acquisitions or generational investments to build out businesses over the coming decades rather than just years, according to Devarajan Nambakam, co-head of investment banking for Goldman Sachs Group Inc. in India.

M&A volume has reached nearly $41 billion in 2025, a roughly 3% increase from the same period last year, data compiled by Bloomberg show. A strong third quarter, when activity shot up by almost 19% from a year earlier, helped offset the weaker first six months.

In July alone, Tata Motors Ltd. acquired Iveco Group NV’s commercial trucks and buses business, French consulting company Capgemini SE bought IT outsourcing firm WNS Holdings Ltd. and Schneider Electric SE purchased Temasek Holdings Pte’s stake in their joint venture.

Buyout firms and sovereign wealth funds have also been busy. Warburg Pincus has teamed up with billionaire Sunil Mittal to buy a 49% stake in Haier Appliances (India) Pvt., Bloomberg News has reported, while Temasek-backed Manipal Education & Medical Group bought a majority stake in India’s Sahyadri Hospitals. TPG Inc.-backed digital services firm Altimetrik Corp. acquired SLK Software to boost its artificial intelligence, automation and analytics business.

“I’ve been tracking the Indian market for over 15 years, and private equity activity is at its highest right now,” Nambakam said. The country is “a cornerstone of many private equity firms’ Asia strategy for the next five to 10 years,” he said.

Take Permira Holdings Ltd. The investment firm is overhauling its Asia strategy, closing offices in Hong Kong and Shanghai and shuffling senior leadership to India, where it sees stronger momentum and a more robust pipeline for deals, people familiar with the matter have said.

Local players
Other recent deals highlight a growing presence of local players doing transactions. JSW Group agreed to acquire as much as 75% of Akzo Nobel NV’s Indian business to expand in areas such as paints, and Torrent Pharmaceuticals Ltd. bought KKR & Co.’s stake in JB Chemicals & Pharmaceuticals Ltd.

“Ten years ago, you certainly wouldn’t have had as much confidence in saying that an Indian strategic would buy a local business,” said Subhakanta Bal, a managing director at Rothschild & Co. in India. “This has significantly evolved where we have seen domestic strategics now essentially look at M&A as a very viable means to transform and grow their business across sectors.”

India’s stable stock market has supported dealmaking both in M&A and equity capital markets. Building on a record year for listings in 2024, about $10 billion has been raised via IPOs this year, data compiled by Bloomberg show.

Some big listings are expected in the coming quarters, including the long-awaited IPO of Reliance Jio Infocomm Ltd. Billionaire Mukesh Ambani is aiming to take India’s largest wireless carrier public by the first half of 2026, as Reliance Industries Ltd. looks to unlock shareholder value and provide an exit route for investors.

A healthy and robust capital market providing investors with viable exits is boosting confidence among asset buyers, according to Bal, who advised Coca-Cola Co. on its sale of a 40% stake in its Indian bottling company to Jubilant Bhartia Group.

Long-term growth
“New sectors for dealmaking are emerging, like auto components and electronics manufacturing services, which is driving increasing appetite for buyouts and fundraising in private markets,” said Ashish Jhaveri, a managing director and head of investment banking at Jefferies Financial Group Inc. in India.

Domestic consolidation in sectors such as health care, consumer goods, industrials and renewables represent another driver for M&A, Jhaveri said. Adding to that, foreign companies with Indian units are evaluating strategies as the landscape evolves, he said.

The positive outlook is still vulnerable to geopolitical tensions, which may derail some transactions. President Donald Trump this week said he’s not looking at lowering tariffs on India, one week after the US doubled levies on the country’s imports to 50% as punishment for its Russian oil imports.

“The current uncertainty could lead to a pause in M&A in certain sectors in India in the short term,” Jhaveri said. “That said, we still see great opportunities for companies to grow strategically via deals in the long run. The appetite for M&A is here to stay.”