ET Now Global Business Summit 2026: 'Today, India is a vibrant market for control buyouts,' says Carlyle's Zeluck

Synopsis India presents a dynamic landscape for private equity investors, particularly for control buyouts. The market has transformed significantly, offering greater liquidity and partnership opportunities with business promoters. This shift enables private equity firms to acquire entire companies, leveraging India's growing pool of world-class management talent. Exit strategies are now more straightforward, making India an attractive investment destination. India is a vibrant market for control buyouts deals and a good place for private equity investors to be in, said a top executive of private equity firm Carlye. The US-headquartered company manages more than $500 billion in assets. Greg Zeluck, co-head of Carlyle's Asia buyout operations and founder, managing director of the company's first Asia buyout fund, said India has transformed significantly since his firm started looking to invest in the market in the early 2000s. Zeluck was speaking with Manisha Girotra, chief executive officer of Moelis & Co, on the sidelines of the ET NOW Global Business Summit in New Delhi on Friday. Carlyle had set up its first Asia buyout fund in 1998. "When we first were out here, a lot of PE investing was done in minority deals, and basically people were handing cheques, that was pretty much it. Working with promoters to grow businesses was really not that easy," said Zeluck. "Promoters were looking for money and not for advice." Live Events Zeluck was describing how private equity investing has changed in India. "Also when you went to exit, selling your stake was not easy. You wanted to take your company public, but it was by appointment only. It was not easy to do an IPO," he said. In contrast, Zeluck said today's market looks very different from the lens of a private equity investor. "That changed dramatically in the late 2000s. Today, there is enormous liquidity in whether it's an IPO, secondary block deal, M&A sales of companies... Control deals are available and entire partnership deals with promoters are also on the cards," Zeluck said, adding, "Today India is an incredibly vibrant market for doing control buyouts for owning entire companies." Zeluck said certain other factors were enabling the opportunity for buying companies entirely as opposed to investing for small minority stakes. "Entrepreneurs who have built these businesses, many a time don't have family members who will be taking the helm when the promoter tries to retire. That's on one end and on the other end they also recognise that they can grow the business to a certain stage but then they hit a ceiling... and in order to break through that ceiling, they need a partner to add some value, add some skills and add some muscle to get to business to the next level," he said. Carlyle is no stranger to control deals in India. It is a controlling shareholder of Hexaware Technologies, a listed company worth $4 billion. It bought pharma companies Sequent Scientific and Viyash Life Sciences and recently merged them in a $1 billion transaction. In pursuing that transaction, it backed a pharmaceutical industry veteran Hari Babu Bodepudi, a former global COO at drug major Mylan who had founded Viyash. He is now at the helm of the two companies. It recently bought out Nido Home Finance from Edelweiss, along with former HDFC Bank executive Aditya Puri. It has also made minority investments in the early years it operated in India. It was an investor in HDFC and PNB Housing Finance. "There are a lot of opportunities to buy companies. It started principally in the IT services space, but now it has expanded into financial services , manufacturing, healthcare...," said Zeluck. "Whether on the services side or pharmaceutical side ...there have been some big buyout deals as well." He said one of the differentiating factors has been the ability to get great C-suite-level talent in India. "The talent pool at C-suite level is one of the biggest things that has changed in 25 years in India. The pool of world-class managers in India has expanded dramatically," said Zeluck. This is helping private equity firms carry out control buyout deals. He cited strategies such as benchmarking with best global companies, using M&A as a tool to scale up a company that they have invested in. "If you put money in India, there is a very straightforward path to get money out as long as you invest well," he said. (You can now subscribe to our Economic Times WhatsApp channel) A tale of two events: How IndiGo-Air India power balance changed in 6 months Can the India-US trade deal alone arrest rupee’s downfall? Saurabh Mukherjea’s long walk through the quality cycle How the ‘barbaric relic’ turned boon for millions of SMEs in India Stock Radar: Jindal Steel stock breaks out from Saucer formation to hit fresh record high in February 2026 – time to buy? These mid-cap stocks with ‘Strong Buy’ & ‘Buy’ recos can rally over 25%, according to analysts 1 2 3