The February edition of Dealtracker highlights the significant surge in India's deal activity, showcasing remarkable resilience despite global economic uncertainties.
Q1 Dealtracker 2025
The latest edition of the Dealtracker highlights a strong start to 2025, marked by multi-year highs in deal volumes and values across mergers and acquisitions and private equity. Domestic transactions dominated M&A activity, while inbound cross-border interest reflected growing investor confidence. Private equity maintained its momentum, with notable activity in consumer, financial services, technology, and energy sectors, supported by large-ticket investments. While IPO and QIP activity declined sharply, broader deal sentiment remained positive, driven by a focus on strategic consolidation and long-term capital deployment. Policy reforms and regulatory clarity continued to support investor access and participation, reinforcing India’s position as a key investment destination.
Sector trends
Key insights from the Q1 Dealtracker 2025
Q1 2025 commenced strong with 636 transactions valued at USD 24.4 billion. This was driven by all-time high M&A activity with 228 deals (USD 15.8 bn) dominated by domestic transactions coupled with record inbound activity. PE activity has been witnessing quarter on quarter increase with return of billion dollar deals in this quarter. This momentum is expected to continue through 2025 as investors are strategically channeling funds into high-growth sectors like retail, banking, renewable energy, and e-mobility.
Shanthi Vijetha
Partner, Due Diligence, Grant Thornton Bharat
Q1 continues to be interesting. 2025 began with 408 deals amounting to USD 8.6 billion. It stayed true to the trend over the last 12 to 15 months with an increasing number of deals but smaller sizes. This quarter, the consumer and retail sector took the lead in terms of both deal volumes and values. VCs remained the more active of the lot, with PE funds focused on buyouts, though there was fairly limited activity in the space. Notably, the largest transaction was Temasek committing USD 1 billion to Haldiram’s in a deal that took a fairly long time to come to fruition and promises to remain an interesting bet. Overall, a muted sentiment in the capital markets in India suggests that valuations should reach more realistic levels to restore investor interest, though global uncertainty from US tariff expectations shall keep investors waiting to see how the chips land in the coming days. We think the year has started well, though PE activity shows a pick-up from H2 more realistically.
Vishal Agarwal
Partner and Private Equity Group & Deals Tax Advisory Leader, Grant Thornton Bharat
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