Welcome back. Large Asia Pacific-focused private equity funds have been somewhat sparse over the past few years due to a variety of factors, chief among them being a less than favourable track record on returns. In Edition #32, we explore whether that’s changing and what it means for India.
In Recco, we tell you what’s more your money’s worth than a plastic pocket watch.
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Asia’s Private Capital Comeback and Where India Fits
Early this week, Bain Capital announced the final close of its sixth Asia-focused private equity fund at $10.5 billion, significantly exceeding the original $7 billion target. Asia Fund VI is the largest the Boston-based private equity firm has raised for the region in the 20 years that it’s been investing here.
The fund comes at a time when Asia Pacific-focused fundraising has been on a slide for a few years.
In 2025, private equity and venture capital (PE-VC) fundraising focused on the Asia Pacific region dropped to $58 billion (excluding RMB-denominated vehicles) – a 12-year low, continuing a decline that began in 2021, according to Bain & Company’s Asia Pacific Private Equity Report 2026. Further, dry powder across the region declined from $278 billion in 2024 to $240 billion. Asia Pacific-focused funds, which typically also invest in India, accounted for 22% of funds raised for the region in 2025, against 45% the previous year, the report said.
Starting this year, though, several global PE firms have either raised or are in advanced stages of raising their largest ever Asia Pacific-focused vehicles.
Swedish PE major EQT set the benchmark in April when its BPEA Private Equity Fund IX reached its hard cap at $15.6 billion – the largest Asia Pacific-specific fund raised to date. Launched with an initial target of $12.5 billion, the fund will focus on control investments across sectors such as technology, healthcare and services. Blackstone is expected to announce the close of the Blackstone Capital Partners Asia III fund shortly. Launched with a $10 billion target, it crossed that threshold late last year and has since drawn commitments worth $12 billion, Bloomberg reported in March.
KKR began marketing its fifth Asia buyout fund in November last year, targeting $15 billion, Reuters reported. It’s also on the road for the Asia Pacific Infrastructure Investors III fund, which has a target corpus of over $9 billion, according to media reports. Singapore-based Hillhouse Investment is in the market to raise a reported $7 billion for its sixth Asia buyout fund.
The Bain & Company report projects a rebound in Asia Pacific-focused fundraising starting this year with as many as 60 funds with $1 billion-plus target sizes currently on the road.
A rebound is significant for India, which has historically been one of the most consistent destinations for allocations from such vehicles. Blackstone’s India presence — the deepest of any global buyout firm in the country — has been a central part of its Asia fund marketing story. Bain Capital has backed businesses in India across healthcare, financial services, technology and consumer sectors. EQT’s BPEA platform has a long-standing India portfolio. And, KKR’s Asia funds have been involved in several of India’s most significant PE transactions.
India-specific fundraising had a strong run in 2025. ChrysCapital closed its tenth fund at $2.2 billion in November. Singapore-based Quadria Capital, the healthcare-focused investor which invests primarily in India and Southeast Asia, closed its third fund at $1.07 billion in May, exceeding its $800 million target. A91 Partners closed its third fund at $665 million in April last year. On the venture side, Accel closed its eighth India fund at $650 million and Bessemer Venture Partners closed its second India-dedicated fund at $350 million.
In February this year, Peak XV Partners raised $1.3 billion across three new vehicles — India seed, India venture, and Asia Pacific funds — its first independent fundraise since its separation from Sequoia Capital in 2023. The same month, Motilal Oswal Alternates closed its fifth vehicle, India Business Excellence Fund V, at Rs 8,500 crore (approximately $939 million), exceeding its initial target of Rs 6,500 crore.
The large India-specific closes of 2025 and early 2026 are unlikely to be repeated at the same scale in the near term. The macroeconomic and geopolitical environment has grown more uncertain, extending fundraising timelines. Limited partners will be inclined to concentrate capital with proven, high-performing managers.
India’s attractiveness as a private capital destination remains structurally intact. The depth and liquidity of the public markets, the pace of domestic institutional development, and the pipeline of IPO-ready companies all continue to register positively with global allocators. Whether that translates into accelerated deployment from pan-Asia Pacific vehicles will depend on the quality and momentum of returns from existing portfolios and how quickly the broader fundraising recovery takes hold.
The Week in Deals
Spotlight on Fintech; Peak XV Continues Overseas Shopping Spree
A handful of fintech deals, mostly early stage, stood out in an otherwise lacklustre week for India-focused PE-VC investments. Peak XV Partners made a splash again with three more overseas bets.
Iscon Balaji Foods raised $150 million from Advent, which is picking up a significant minority stake in the Ahmedabad-based company. The investment was part of a $215 million round, which included a $70 million investment by 360 One Asset in January. Iscon Balaji Foods manufactures and exports processed frozen potato products.
Scapia raised a $63 million Series C round led by General Catalyst. Z47 and Peak XV Partners were returning investors in the round. Bangalore-based Scapia positions itself as a travel fintech and offers consumers co-branded credit cards optimised for travel spending, UPI-based payments, flight and hotel bookings and other travel-related products.
Anscer Robotics raised $5.4 million in a Series A round led by IAN Alpha Fund. Info Edge Ventures joined the round. The Plano, Texas-based startup, which also has operations in Bangalore, builds intelligent robotics solutions to automate warehouse and logistics operations.
Trackk raised $3.7 million in a seed round led by Lightspeed. Info Edge Ventures participated in the round, along with Unacademy founders Gaurav Munjal and Roman Saini and other high networth individuals. The Mumbai-based startup offers AI-powered stock discovery tools to make investing more accessible for first-time investors.
ONO, a Bangalore-based agri-finance startup, raised $1.2 million in a pre-Series A round led by Aeravti Ventures. Tremis Capital participated in the round.
Sub $1 million deals: Music streaming and distribution platform Damroo raised $0.5 million from Hindustan Times. AI-powered stock investments platform Kalpi raised $0.4 million from Rainmatter. Apparel and accessories brand Meta Fashion raised $0.4 million in a pre-seed round led by Lumikai.
It was another week of overseas deals for Peak XV Partners. It joined London-based Primer’s $100 million Series C round led by Sofina. Balderton, Accel, ICINIQ, Tencent and Speedinvest were returning investors in the round. Primer is a payments infrastructure company that enables businesses to optimise how online payments are processed via a unified AI-powered software platform.
The venture capital firm also doubled down on Variational, a Cayman Islands-based startup that’s building on-chain infrastructure for retail and institutional derivatives trading. Variational raised a $50 million Series A this week led by Dragonfly Capital.
That’s not all. It joined Los Angeles-based AI-led content marketing tool Clouted’s $7 million seed round, which was led by Slow Ventures.
The deals follow Peak XV’s overseas bets from last week on Vapi and Exaforce.
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Recco | Notes on Culture, Craft and the Considered Life
Skip the Queue. Buy This Instead
If you were among those who despaired at the sight of grown men crowding outside Swatch stores in Paris, KL, and Mumbai, you are not alone. The Audemars Piguet x Swatch Royal Pop drop was an outright farce. One can acquire several fine objects for the official retail price — around Rs 40,000 —of the pocket watch. Here’s one at half the price. Meet Decimo by Gritti Venetia.
Gritti is a small, family-run perfumery out of Venice. Luca Gritti selects his own materials, answers to no one, and wrote his own brief for the woody-spicy Decimo: “a man indifferent to the fashions, out of time, faithful to his identity, wild.”
It opens with bergamot before settling into something warmer. The birch and ambroxan do interesting things in the dry-down. It has the structural DNA of Creed Aventus, but costs considerably less. The entire Gritti line is available at niche perfume retailer Scentido.
And about what you’re not buying: bioceramic is a fancy word for plastic. The Royal Pop is a plastic pocket watch with an AP logo, built for people who queue on pavements at 6am to feel special. You are smarter than that.
Recco is a column by Murali Menon. Murali has spent a career paying close attention to how things are made, where they come from, and why some of them endure. Every edition, one recommendation: a maker, an object, a place, a practice.
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