Temasek to invest OPM US$9-10 billion in India over next 3 years

Temasek is looking to invest as much as OPM US$9-10 billion in India over the next three years as it is seeing more opportunities to deploy larger sums of capital in the Indian economy, Indian-origin senior executives told Indian media.

Temasek, which invested over OPM US$1 billion in India in FY23, has already deployed close to OPM US$2 billion so far this fiscal led by its investment in Manipal Health and a small cheque in Atomberg Technologies. Typically, in the last few years, Temasek’s investments in India have clocked around OPM US$1 billion per year.

Temasek’s overall India exposure stands at around US$21 billion on a mark to market basis, with cost basis (original cost of investments) unrevealed.

“We are very bottom up driven investors. And now we see bottom up opportunities in India growing and we see more opportunities to deploy capital, and deploy higher amounts than we used to before on an individual investment basis,” said Ravi Lambah, Head, Investment Group; and Head, India, at Temasek.

“In the past, we were putting a billion dollars (OPM) a year to work, but now we see the opportunity of India growing. We are very encouraged by a few things that are happening in the country. We like the fact that the policy framework has been very consistent here and that the government has been very forward looking on this front. GST has been a game changer. There are many different areas where digitization in India has been fantastic. We also see that infrastructure creation has been very important for the government. So if you put all this together, on a bottom up basis, we are far more comfortable to deploy large amounts of capital in companies where we see potential,” said Lambah.

Temasek’s India portfolio now forms 6% of its global portfolio, increasing from 5% last year.

“Five years ago, India was about 3%. Last year, it was 5% and this year it has increased to 6%. So clearly, the focus of the firm and India’s performance is getting more and more material,” said Vishesh Shrivastav, Managing Director, Investment (India) at Temasek.

The Singapore state investor is keen on opportunities in areas such as healthcare services, consumption, digitization, sustainability and energy transition themes.

“We are very structurally very positive on healthcare as a sector in India. We think there's a huge demand. It's undeserved. And it is part of our sustainable living trend that we see as a very long term trend that will benefit populations globally,” said Lambah.

Anonymous