Adar Poonawalla fuels rumours of buying Virat’s RCB

Hello,

This week, private markets are bracing for a cycle test as Asia’s exit environment tightens, even as India stands out with continued deal momentum. Global GPs and LPs are recalibrating timing, secondaries, and valuations, hinting at a cautious but active close to the year. 

Meanwhile, India’s private-sector banks are losing some of their post-pandemic shine amid renewed credit risk concerns linked to US tariffs, and a steady rupee supported by RBI intervention. The twin signals suggest both cost-of-capital pressures and a guarded lending stance for big-ticket transactions.

And finally, India’s services PMI dipped in September as demand cooled, tempering optimism in an otherwise resilient economy. Yet Axis Bank’s move to scale up acquisition financing points to growing domestic confidence in structured dealmaking, even as global liquidity remains choppy.

I hope you enjoy this week’s roundup — please connect on LinkedIn to discuss your next M&A deal.

Let’s dive in.

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Market Trends

How to spend it 

SEBI’s recent enquiries into family offices, publicly denied but widely reported, attracted a fair bit of attention. One journalist even said India was missing about $195 billion of its ultra-rich cash which could go towards nation-building. 

A recent self-reported industry study on impact investment said family offices grew from about 45 in 2018 to 300 in 2024. The authors framed that evangelistically as an inflection point in how wealth was organised in India now, and how they could make a difference.

Another EY survey showed behaviour was mixed. About a quarter of the richest Indian families emphasised preserving wealth over growth, a defensive stance. Roughly 59% had formalised a will or constitution; 19% used trusts or LLPs for governance and ownership, signalling maturation. 

Nearly half said changing tax laws for family offices concerned them, while 37% cited cross-border regulatory complexity. Close to 60% said they allocated less than 10% of their portfolio to PE and VC. So while stated ambition is bold, execution remains cautious. 

Private credit has been emerging as a favoured sleeve because it offers yield with downside protection, especially as India’s distressed-asset frameworks improve.

So while headline deals sometimes painted family offices as risk-seeking or all-in on VC and PE, the survey suggested much of that was heat rather than light.

What is a private office?

Private family offices took many legal forms – trusts, private companies, LLPs, or offshore vehicles – and responsibility often sat across SEBI, RBI, IFSCA and tax authorities. That fragmentation slowed any single regulatory fix and made policy responses complex and slow.

The most visible investments

In recent times Premji Invest led WoodenStreet’s Series C, a large home-furnishing round, while Ratan Tata’s RNT Associates continued to make strategic angel investments, writing smaller cheques that carried high signalling value for founders. 

Catamaran Ventures signalled a shift toward industry pointing to frothy startup valuations. Industry trackers showed family offices repeatedly participated in growth rounds and occasional buyouts over 2024–25, but many investments occurred through private vehicles, holding companies or evergreen vehicles and therefore escaped front-page coverage, but here is a well-intentioned but incomplete tracker.

What is stopping scaled cross-border deals?

Several things. 

Legal form complexity and tax uncertainty raise transaction costs, and who wants those? Regulators and advisors worried about insider trading and conflicts when very large private pools participated in IPOs and block trades. 

If unregulated family pools accessed the same privileges as qualified institutional buyers (QIBs) without governance safeguards, fairness and market integrity questions would follow.

SEBI’s consultations will seek stakeholder views on disclosures of legal entities, assets and periodic returns for very large private buyers. The regulator appeared to be weighing bespoke reporting and conflict-management rules versus folding SFOs into existing mutual fund or AIF regimes. 

Rule changes may push family offices toward structured co-investment vehicles, which would make them more visible to banks and advisors.

Where could family cash go next?

Opportunities where patient family capital could add value include Byju and Punj Lloyd’s distressed assets and insolvency sales, plenty of those around; mid-market buyouts as India’s lenders entered acquisition finance, and industrial capex plays in li-ion cells, semiconductors and renewables. 

Co-investment schemes under the AIF framework also offer a practical route for family offices to scale participation alongside experienced players like pension funds or other corporates.

M&A advisers may need to combine governance and flexibility, build rapid diligence teams for insolvency auctions and piecemeal sales; offer pragmatic tax and cross-border structuring, including compliant GIFT-City or feeder fund options.

SEBI’s eminent gaze (not policy, mind) could well lead to family offices – whether single or multi-family – toeing the line in the interest of IPO fairness and market maturity.