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.)