Monthly Dealtracker - July 2022

Slow growth amidst rising inflation makes for a subdued global economic outlook. Like many other countries, Asia’s third-largest economy has also been grappling with soaring inflation, aggravated by rising commodity prices. A weaker rupee has further bumped up imported inflation. The downtrend in deal values was due to an absence of big-ticket deals, non-disclosure of values in most M&A deals and private equity (PE)/venture capital (VC) funding being dominated by early-stage companies.

“PE deal values witnessed a significant decline as big-ticket investments have slowed down but small tickets continue to garner investor attention, hence the recent monthly trend in volumes is maintained,” said Shanthi Vijetha, Partner, Growth, Grant Thornton Bharat.

Key highlights of the publication

• Deal values amounted to only USD 280 million, the second lowest monthly values till date, due to a lack of high-value transactions.
• For the month of July, there was a significant decline in the cross-border deal activity (58% decline over July 2021 volumes)
• Start-up, e-commerce and IT led the deal volumes for the month, while infra, pharma, retail and banking sectors topped the overall values.
• The month saw the birth of only one Unicorn, OneCard - in the fintech segment

M&A snapshot

• With 28% of M&A deal volumes each, the start-up and IT sectors continued to dominate the M&A deal activity with nine deals each
• Banking, e-commerce, education, energy and telecom sectors saw muted deal activity compared to July 2021
• Retail, manufacturing and IT sectors witnessed heightened deal activity

PE snapshot

• The start-up sector had a 70% share of PE volumes for July 2022
• The retail tech segment led the investment volumes in the start-up sector with 20% deals
• High-value investments of above USD 100 million in the infra (roadways) and banking (NBFC) sectors