Being a passive investor does not often work. 'Equity' may be the suffix in PE, but in India, some players have learnt to dabble in debt too
Necessity, they say, is the mother of invention. The big boys of global private equity (PE) came in droves about a decade ago, assuming that there must be easy moolah in a booming economy. Some did find a treasure trove, but others found that India is a different place. Despite having completed one major cycle of investments, returns have been few and far between. The golden period for profitable exits was reckoned to be 2005-07, but a few years later, as economic growth coughed and spluttered, the PE business was left licking its wounds. A PwC report released in June found that two-thirds of PE investments were yet to yield returns.
(This story appears in the 08 August, 2014 issue of Forbes India. To visit our Archives, click here.)