A predominance of family-owned companies and a booming Indian stock market are posing challenges for private equity firms, who are finding new ways to invest in the fast-growing economy, top private equity managers said.
Private equity investment in India is expected to grow by a third to $10 billion this year, but most deals involve publicly traded firms because families are reluctant to cede management control, they said.
“Culturally, there's been resistance to give up management control, as entrepreneurs just pass on their business to their children,” Manisha Girotra, managing director, UBS Securities India, said at a Fortune Global Forum conference.
“So PE (private equity) firms are taking minority positions instead of doing buyouts, and do late-stage investments.”
Most top global private equity firms have set up offices in India and have stepped up the pace of deal-making recently.
Blackstone Group has said it has a huge pipeline of deals and was targeting deals in the $50-$500 million range, even as U.S. and European credit markets remained frozen because of a global credit crunch.
3i Group Plc's <III.L> 3i India Infrastructure recently paid $227 million for a minority stake in Adani Power Pvt Ltd, and Warburg Pincus bought 11 percent in Havells India Ltd for $110 million.
“Businesses here are growing at 20 to 100 percent, so they are concerned about getting lower valuations from PE firms,” said Rajesh Khanna, managing director, Warburg Pincus India, which has moved about $2 billion in 30 Indian firms across sectors.
“And they often have have multiple businesses, so they don't know which ones to sell,” he said.
LOCAL COMPETITION
Limits on foreign investment in some sectors such as banking has forced Warburg Pincus to rewrite its rule book.
“In our history, we have never invested in a cement company or a telecom company, but we've done both in India,” Khanna said, referring to Ambuja Cements and top mobile services firm Bharti Airtel Ltd .
For The Carlyle Group , however, high valuations on the back of a booming stock market have made infrastructure companies unviable investments.
“We'd love to invest in a greenfield infrastructure project, but to buy out infrastructure assets, you need a strong heart,” said Rajeev Gupta, managing director of Carlyle India, which has preferred financial services firms.
A red-hot stock market, which has gained over 40 percent so far this year, is also encouraging private firms to go public quite early on, shunning PE investment, he said.
Foreign PE firms are also competing with local firms that started small but have grown in confidence and size, Khanna said.
“They are very ambitious now, and we are competing with them in the market for the big-ticket items,” he said, pointing to the private equity arm of ICICI Bank and ChrysCapital, which has a new $1.25 billion cross-sector Indian fund.
The booming stock market has made exits easier for private equity firms, Girotra said, who also pointed out that first-generation entrepreneurs are more open to private equity.
But they can also pose other challenges.
“With the liquidity and the high levels of confidence, we end up talking about what they want to buy instead,” she said.
Source: Reuters