If you look at global equity market returns and compare them to India, you might think the Indian returns look flat—a mere 0.3 percent—particularly for the past year. However, Sandeep Naik, Managing Director and Head of India-Asia Pacific at General Atlantic, says that’s not the whole picture.
“Take a look at the U.S., what’s happening in Europe with regard to Brexit, what’s going on in China,” Naik recently told The Economic Times of India. “People look at India and see that it is one of the brightest spots in terms of investment destinations.”
General Atlantic has invested about $2 billion in India. After exiting only about half of its companies, it has already seen a return of more than $2 billion.
“We have made exceptionally healthy returns because it’s all about micro, and not just about macro. It’s about identifying the right entrepreneurs and helping them scale their companies,” said Naik.
The Indian companies in which General Atlantic has invested include payment aggregator Billdesk, healthcare IT service company Citius Tech, and women’s apparel manufacturer House of Anita Dongre.
“No other place in the world today is creating more entrepreneurs than India,” Naik said. “When you have a climate where the governance is very strong, where the government is putting policies in place which are decisive and clear, and they’re executing on it, they’re creating an environment for growth.”
Private sector investments in project, or capital expenditure, had stalled in India, but these policy initiatives should improve the outlook for 2017.
“I think you’re going to see a renewed interest in private sector capex playing out in the next few years,” Naik said. “In terms of General Atlantic, we have a pipeline of 10 to 15 companies we want to back. These are entrepreneurs we have tracked for a very long time, and they are companies we have full faith will produce great returns if we go and back them at the right time.”
General Atlantic’s Indian investments fall into four sectors: financial services including fintech, healthcare, the consumer sector, and technology such as IT services companies.
Naik says that the time for internet companies to scale in India is now. “It’s going to be the Version 2.0, which will address the real Indian needs versus doing a cut-copy-paste model of what worked in the West, so technology we are very, very keen on investing in.”
Indeed, in 2015, consumer technology was the largest sector in terms of private equity and venture capital investments. The continued rise of internet penetration is a key factor in that sector’s growth. About 275 million Indians currently have mobile or broadband internet access, and this figure is projected to grow to approximately 575 million by 2019.
Likewise, “anything linked to an Indian woman, be it apparel, accessories, cosmetics—with women entering the workforce, this is a clear trend in terms of secular growth,” said Naik. And with the massive supply-demand mismatch in healthcare in India, General Atlantic believes that there are tremendous opportunities in that field as well.
“We at General Atlantic have been bullish about India for a very long time, and we think there [are] 15 to 20 years of secular growth in India,” Naik said. “If you think about what’s happening in India today, entrepreneurs are building India, and India is giving birth to entrepreneurs.”
Photo: The Mumbai skyline. Credit: SNEHIT / Shutterstock, Inc.