Amidst the market turmoil, M&A deals and private equity (PE) deals broke records of the past three years as the deal activity touched 226 deals worth $7.2 billion in February 2025. According to the Grant Thornton DealTracker report, the volume of deal activity increased by 67% compared to last February while the value of deals increased 5.4 times on a year-on-year basis and it increased 14% on a month-on-month basis.
Mergers & Acquisitions Deals
In February 2025, 85 m&a deals amounting to $4.8 billion were announced. Domestic deals made up 68% of the Mergers & Acquisitions deals volume and 78% of the total value. However, outbound deals value increased and values of inbound deals fell sharply.
According to the report, it is the domestic demand which is pushing the deal activities upward as the foreign investments in the public markets of India has been sluggish over the past few months.
Some of the crucial M&A deals were of ONGC-NTPC Green’s acquisition of Ayana Renewable Power for $2.3 billion in February. Then Praana group acquired Owens Corning’s Glass Reinforcement business for $755 million. This deal constitutes 895 of the total value of deals in the manufacturing sector in February 2025.
Coming to key acquirers, Zen Technologies and Nitco Limited acquired four companies individually, which added significantly to the deals’ volume. Sector-wise, the Media and entertainment segment witnessed a major increase, especially in the gaming and sports deals, which also includes Torrent Group acquiring Irelia Sports (Gujarat Titans) for $872 million.
While the volume of Mergers & Acquisitions deals increased drastically in February, surpassing the past four months’ record, the values fell even in February, three months straight, since December 2024. This has somewhat left the investors and the experts in a dilemma.
Private Equity Deals
Coming to the private equity deals, a total of 141 transactions were noticed, which amounted to $2.4 billion. This has been the highest volume of PE deals since 2022’s May. However, here, as per the Thornton DealTracker report, the PE deals volume has been growing since November 2024 continuously on a month-on-month basis. Within PE deals, early-stage investments dominated this, including Seed deals to Series A deals, which together constituted around 50% of the total PE volumes.
The crucial PE deals were Cube Highways’ deal worth $487 million for two road projects, which are –
- Quazigund Expressway
- Athaang Jammu Udhampur Highway
Another significant deal in the PE space was Multiples Alternate Asset Management’s deal where it invested $200 million in Qburst Technologies (IT &ITES).
Unlike M&A, PE space witnessed growth in both volume of deals as well as value of the deals cracked in February 2025.
Sectoral Analysis of Deal Activity
The sectors which were mainly in focus in February included –
- Retail & Consumers
- IT & ITES
- Banking & Financial Services
- Pharma & Healthcare
- Biotech
These sectors drove the volume growth significantly, aggregating to 60% of the total volumes. On the other hand, traditional sectors such as energy and natural resources, manufacturing, infrastructure, media and entertainment, constituted 66% of the total value of the deals.
Union Budget 2025 had a lot to do with the surge in the deals volume as it introduced multiple incentives for MSMEs, and startup businesses, also announced higher capex and also sector-specific projects.
All these are expected to help the deal volume grow, and the entire deal space to become highly interesting in the coming months.
Source: CNBC TV18
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