India M&A 2026: fewer deals, much bigger bets

India’s dealmakers are getting pickier. 

BCG’s latest read on the market shows deal volume down nearly 20% this year, while total deal value barely moved (down just 2%) because the deals that did close got much bigger. 

Deals over $1 billion now account for 14 percentage points more of total deal value than a year ago, and outbound M&A from Indian acquirers is up $3.8 billion even as domestic and inbound activity cooled. 

Capital hasn’t left India, BCG argues, it’s just concentrating where conviction runs highest.

That discipline sits awkwardly next to the week’s biggest corporate story: the Tata Sons succession battle. Tata Trusts, which controls 66% of the holding company, proposed merging two group firms into Tata Sons in a September 28 letter, a move critics say is designed to dodge an RBI-mandated listing that the Shapoorji Pallonji Group has been pushing for. 

Two Sir Dorabji Tata Trust vice-chairmen say they weren’t even consulted, and both sides have now lawyered up.

Global capital is still finding its way in regardless: ADIA’s confirmed stake in Allied Blenders & Distillers is now being followed by reported interest from Japan’s Suntory, eyeing 10-15% of its own. This is exactly the kind of concentrated, high-conviction bet BCG says is defining the market.

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Deals summary | September 26 – October 2, 2026

The Deals Tracker logged 19 confirmed deals this fortnight, with energy the busiest sector. Five deals across wind, solar and hybrid projects, including KPI Green Energy’s ₹2,410 crore wind asset acquisition and Nuvoco Vistas’ 26% stake in a CleanMax wind-solar hybrid project in Rajasthan. 

Healthcare followed close behind with four deals, led by a ₹4,700 crore block trade in Aster DM Healthcare and Anupam Rasayan’s ₹1,750 crore takeover of Bliss GVS Pharma. 

Materials and consumer rounded out the busier corners of the market, with JSW Cement’s merger with Shiva Cement and ITC taking full ownership of Yoga Bar’s parent for ₹645 crore.

Most of the fortnight’s activity was domestic consolidation, but foreign capital kept arriving too: KKR acquired logistics platform Cisterninia with plans to build a pan-India liquid storage network, CPP Investments made its India hospitality debut with a ₹3,000 crore bet on Prestige’s hotel platform, and ADIA backed Allied Blenders & Distillers.

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Fewer deals, bigger bets: What BCG’s latest data says about Indian M&A

A new BCG report reframes what looked like a slowdown in Indian dealmaking as something closer to a change in appetite. 

Deal volume in India fell roughly 20% in the first seven months of 2026 compared with the same period last year – a steeper decline than the ~18% average seen across global markets. But total deal value fell just 2%, because the transactions that did go through were considerably larger.

The data backs this up. Deals worth more than $1 billion accounted for 14 percentage points more of total Indian M&A value in 2026 than in 2025, and deals above $500 million now make up roughly 59% of all Indian M&A value since 2024. 

The investor split tells its own story: deal volume fell 20-25% for both financial sponsors and strategic acquirers, but deal value moved in opposite directions, up 25-30% for sponsors, down roughly 6% for strategics. 

Indian capital is increasingly looking outward too: outbound M&A value rose $3.8 billion even as domestic value fell $1.6 billion and inbound fell $3.7 billion, continuing a run of outbound deals this year including Sun Pharma’s purchase of Organon’s biopharma assets and Coforge’s acquisition of Encora.

Crucially, BCG frames India’s dip as “moderation from an elevated base, not reversion to the mean”. Unlike the global market, which has drifted back toward pre-pandemic deal volumes, India’s activity remains well above where it stood before 2020. 

BCG’s advice to dealmakers: keep screening deals even through the lull, since the capital – more than $20 billion in dry powder for India-focused funds, according to Preqin – hasn’t gone anywhere.

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