Indian companies ramp up overseas dealmaking amid growth push: JPMorgan

Nitin Maheshwari and Ravi Shankar, co-heads of India investment banking, JPMorgan Chase.SummaryIndian companies are becoming larger and increasingly confident in pursuing overseas acquisitions, say JPMorgan Chase & Co.'s co-heads of India investment banking.Indian companies are seeing a renewed appetite for cross-border acquisitions, driven by stronger balance sheets, ambitious expansion plans and a push to unlock value, according to JPMorgan Chase & Co.'s co-heads of India investment banking.“Indian companies are becoming larger and increasingly confident about pursuing acquisitions overseas. They have more confidence in their ability to acquire and integrate businesses, and this has resulted in the increasing share of outbound M&A (merger and acquisition) deals in the last year,” said Ravi Shankar, co-head of investment banking at JPMorgan in India.Outbound acquisitions have largely been driven by sectors with a global manufacturing or market-access focus, including pharmaceuticals, industrials and technology services, added Nitin Maheshwari, co-head of investment banking at the firm.He added that strategic consolidation is a key theme as buyers become increasingly aggressive in pursuing overseas acquisitions in their core sectors.JPMorgan has been involved in several large cross-border transactions, including Sun Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd’s acquisition of Organon ($11.75 billion), Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group's (MUFG) investment in Shriram Finance Ltd ($4.4 billion), Emirates NBD’s acquisition of a controlling stake in RBL Bank Ltd ($3 billion), Nagarro sale to Persistent Systems Ltd (€1.3 billion), Kashiv BioSciences Pvt. Ltd’s sale to Amneal Pharmaceuticals Inc. ($1.1 billion), Macquarie’s sale of Safeway Concessions to Vinci Highways ($1.7 billion) and Encora’s sale to Coforge Ltd ($2.4 billion), among others.“Another key trend globally is that markets are increasingly rewarding scale. Market value globally is concentrating in a handful of the largest companies, where increased scale and higher growth are translating into valuation premiums and multiple spreads,” he said.Maheshwari added that scaled acquirers have the currency and balance sheet to pursue larger deals, including cross-border targets that look inexpensive by comparison. This scale allows businesses to spread technology investments across a larger revenue base, generate greater returns, and unlock more value.Outbound M&A in India stood at $28.6 billion across 147 deals since the beginning of this year, compared to $26.8 billion spanning 194 deals in 2025. In 2024, there were about 152 deals worth $11.3 billion, according to Dealogic data.Inbound deals touched $21 billion this year across 182 transactions, compared to $33.3 billion spanning 233 deals in 2025. That number stood at $12.5 billion across 258 deals in 2024, Dealogic data showed.Scouting opportunitiesHowever, Shankar and Maheshwari pointed to a meaningful recovery in inbound interest, with strategics and private equity (PE) firms remaining active and looking to deploy their available dry powder.“While the numbers for inbound M&As are marginally lower as compared to last year, we are already seeing heightened activity across the manufacturing value chain, with India becoming an increasingly important part of global companies' expansion strategies,” Maheshwari said.This goes beyond the traditional China-plus-one approach. These companies now view India as a critical part of their global supply chains, both as a market and as a manufacturing base to serve the world.“The focus for our MNC clients is increasingly on enhancing the value of their India operations. This is prompting companies to evaluate three alternatives: entering joint ventures, listing locally to raise capital and create a local currency, and pursuing meaningful acquisitions,” Maheshwari said.More specifically, inbound activity has been tilted towards the manufacturing ecosystem, from specialized to basic manufacturing, including auto components, chemicals, and precision engineering, while financial services also see increased momentum, Shankar added.Overall, M&A activity in 2026 stood at $146 billion across 1,153 deals in 2026 as compared to 1,483 deals worth $173 billion a year ago. In 2024, the figure touched $111.2 billion across 1,432 deals, Dealogic data showed. Globally, M&A volume was up 26% year-on-year through the year-to-date period to roughly $4.4 trillion, according to a recent analysis by JPMorgan.Significant appetiteSponsors continue to have significant dry powder to pursue large transactions, with a meaningful share expected to be deployed in India as part of their broader Asia allocations. There is no shortage of capital for the Indian market, as reflected in the recent fundraises by large PE firms, including Bain Capital, Advent International, EQT, and Blackstone.“There is no slowdown in sponsors' appetite for new deals. Rather, they may not have found the right acquisition targets in the sectors they are looking to invest in. Sponsors are also continuously weighing opportunities to deploy additional capital into existing portfolio companies to back growth and M&A,” said Maheshwari.An improving exit environment, with strong outcomes from initial public offerings (IPOs) and secondary sales to other PE firms and strategic buyers, has continued to support deal activity and has kept capital flows in India relatively healthy compared with other markets, Shankar noted.Indian companies are also increasingly pursuing dual-track processes, in which they simultaneously pursue an IPO and a strategic sale. While the practice is more common globally, Shankar expects to see more such transactions, particularly among sponsor-owned companies in India.“This also reflects the growing maturity of the Indian market, where both IPOs and strategic sales are viable exit routes. While valuations will fluctuate depending on capital market conditions, PE investors ultimately assess opportunities based on the returns they can underwrite against the expected exit multiple,” he said.About the AuthorsPriyamvada CPriyamvada is a Mumbai-based business journalist at Mint. She writes about the public and private markets with a key focus on venture capital, private equity, M&As and private credit. Her coverage also spans startups and emerging businesses.Over the last two years, she has uncovered some of the largest deals and interviewed important decision-makers from India’s investment ecosystem. She likes to dabble across different formats like long forms and explainers. Her work has been consistently displayed on the publication's deals page, and she has also written multiple front-page stories.Prior to joining Mint in 2024, she worked out of Reuters’ Bengaluru bureau where she extensively covered the travel, transportation, and logistics industries. Across both her stints, Priyamvada has displayed rigour for breaking news and analyzing interesting data-driven trends. She holds a postgraduate diploma from the Asian College of Journalism's Bloomberg programme. In her free time, she enjoys reading books and trying out different cuisines. She is keen to delve deeper into the various sectors she covers and is always up for a chat. You can reach out to her at priyamvada.c@livemint.com.Sneha ShahSneha Shah is the editor for deals and startups at Mint. Starting off her career in India’s financial capital as a cub reporter for the Mid-day newspaper in the mid-2000s, she later moved on to decode balance sheets and follow the money trail for some of the leading pink publications in the country. She has been covering India’s deals ecosystem for nearly two decades now, closely tracking private- and public-market funding, startups, private equity, venture capital, and investment banking. From breaking some of the biggest deal stories of the past to doing some incisive deep-dives into the latest trends and turnarounds in the industry, she has witnessed the phenomenal growth and transformation of the country’s investment ecosystem from really close quarters. A graduate in journalism, she has worked with The Economic Times, Financial Chronicle, VCCircle and Mid-Day before starting her second stint at Mint in 2022. As a keen observer of India’s startups ecosystem, she aspires to write a book some day, chronicling some of the most inspiring stories the industry has seen so far in its remarkable journey.