ChrysCapital, India’s biggest homegrown private equity firm, on Wednesday announced the close of its latest fund, called ChrysCapital X, at a record $2.2 billion, which they claim is the largest private equity fund raise by an India-focussed firm.
The fund marks a more-than-60 percent jump from its $1.35 billion fund ‘IX’ in 2022.
Since its inception in 1999, ChrysCapital has now raised close to $8.5 billion across 10 private equity funds, a continuation vehicle, and its public markets fund. Through its private equity funds, the firm has deployed over $5.5 billion in more than 110 portfolio companies.
Kunal Shroff, managing partner at ChrysCapital, said: “If you are performing decently well and the market opportunity is large, scale is not a challenge in India. It is just harder, because we crossed the $2 billion mark in India for a country focussed fund for the first time,” he told Forbes India in an exclusive interaction.
Shroff said the new fund will continue—as with its previous funds—to focus on making investments in financial services (lending and non-lending), pharmaceuticals, healthcare, consumer, new-economy and enterprise technology.
ChrysCapital has also been involved in buyouts of companies. It has been in the news for acquiring a majority, over 85 percent stake, in the bakery chain Theobroma. It bought out ICICI Venture’s stake in the family-founded company and most of the founding family’s shares. Theobrama, founded by Mumbai-based sisters Kainaz Messman Harchandrai and Tina Messman Wykes, is expected to hold the balance 15 percent stake.
Around half of the portfolio pipeline constitutes control investments (buyouts) and ChrysCapital has been successful in building a team of experts and consultants, some of whom would be embedded in the companies invested into.
In this new fund, ChrysCapital added more than 30 new global investors, comprising public pension funds, insurance companies, asset management firms, family offices and other institutional investors from Japan, the Middle East, South-East Asia, Europe, and the US. In addition, ChrysCapital, for the first time, has raised capital from Indian investors, with strong participation from institutional investors as well as large family offices.
Shroff explained the rationale for raising money from Indian investors. “Wealth is growing in India, domestic investors are moving from gold and real estate to financial assets. In the financial assets space, equity ownership in households has risen to 6 percent from 2 percent. Equity participation is only growing. We believe India will become a larger space for private equity in coming years,”
Some of ChrysCapital’s investments include Intas Pharmaceuticals, Mankind Pharma, GeBBS Healthcare, Infogain and the National Stock Exchange. It has already returned almost $7.8 billion at a 3x ROI from over 80+ exits to its investors.
ChrysCapital has been a pioneer in terms of identifying investments in the banking and non-banking financial companies (NBFCs) space, being early investors in Axis Bank, Yes Bank, Shriram Transport, AU Small Finance Bank and Mahindra Finance.
From an investment strategy, the company is not expected to be too aggressive in the banking space. It will look at players which have a differentiated or cost-of-funds advantage or a lending advantage.
The company said their experience has helped them go deeper into each of their core investment sectors. “The enterprise technology will include IT services, BPO and SaaS. In the financial services space, on the non-lending side, we are looking at stock exchanges, besides others,” said Gaurav Ahuja, partner.
First Published: Nov 05, 2025, 13:51
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