Temasek widens India bets as portfolio swells to $42 billion

The sovereign wealth fund is building expertise in sectors such as industrials, infrastructure and newer areas including space-tech, while positioning artificial intelligence (AI) as an enabler across its portfolio rather than a standalone investment theme.

"While consumer, healthcare and financial services remain the bulk of our portfolio today, we are also trying to build our expertise in industrials and newer sub-sectors like space-tech," Vishesh Shrivastav, managing director at Temasek India, told Mint in an interview.

In artificial intelligence, Shrivastav said India's biggest opportunity lies in the application layer, where much of the long-term value from new technologies tends to be created. He attributed this to the country's deep talent pool, digitization and infrastructure, which are expected to support broader AI adoption.

Temasek is also working with its portfolio companies to adopt AI while directing fresh capital towards sectors where the technology is more likely to enable growth than disrupt existing business models.

Expanding the playbook

Over the last decade, India has been the best-performing market for the Singapore-based sovereign wealth fund, Shrivastav said.

Temasek is among the most active sovereign wealth funds in India, alongside Singapore's GIC, Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, Mubadala Investment Company and Qatar Investment Authority, with investments spanning financial services, renewables, infrastructure, real estate and healthcare.

Temasek has executed some of the largest transactions in India, including a $1 billion investment for a 10% stake in Agarwal family-backed Haldiram Food International Pvt. Ltd last year and about $2 billion to acquire majority control of Pai family-operated Manipal Health Enterprises in 2023.

The investment firm has been selectively adding new positions in structurally attractive sectors, including its investment in CleanMax in renewables, as it sees growing opportunities emerging from India's manufacturing build-out, capital formation and energy transition.

It has also invested in VFS Global, Lenskart, Eternal, Rebel Foods, Dr Agarwal's, Cloudnine Hospitals, Skyroot Aerospace, Axis Bank, National Stock Exchange and AU Small Finance Bank, among others.

Mint reported earlier this month that Temasek is close to acquiring stakes in space-tech startup Pixxel. Last October, Mint reported that the investment firm was close to acquiring a stake in medical devices maker Romsons Group.

“On an average, we have deployed about $3 billion every year and we see enough opportunity to continue doing that,” he said, detailing that the bulk of the capital invested in FY26 was in follow-on opportunities. Historically, the investment firm has made follow-on investments in companies such as CureFit Healthcare, Cartrade, Manipal, Cloudnine and Licious.

“The key is to expand the scope of what our companies are doing – whether it is for geographical expansions or tapping into other ancillary areas through bolt-on acquisitions,” Shrivastav said, adding that this benefits the firm to double down on the well-performing companies.

Temasek is also open to pursuing more control deals in India opportunistically, a strategy that has worked globally where nearly 40% of its companies are majority owned, he added.

It also has an asset management arm that has invested in Indian funds such as NIIF, Innovation Capital and InfoEdge Ventures, while gaining additional exposure through limited partner investments in other Asia-focused funds.

Over the past three years, Temasek has invested close to $9 billion in India. Its portfolio has also matured, with companies such as Dr. Agarwal's, Lenskart and Pine Labs going public in 2025, and CleanMax earlier this year. More listings, including Manipal Hospitals, are expected in the coming weeks.

The firm also recorded its largest private-market exit through the sale of its stake in Schneider Electric India Pvt. Ltd in a $6.4 billion deal last year. It also exited its stake in O2 Power, its joint venture with EQT.

Priyamvada C

Priyamvada is a Mumbai-based business journalist at Mint. She writes about the public and private markets with a key focus on venture capital, private equity, M&As and private credit. Her coverage also spans startups and emerging businesses.

Over the last two years, she has uncovered some of the largest deals and interviewed important decision-makers from India’s investment ecosystem. She likes to dabble across different formats like long forms and explainers. Her work has been consistently displayed on the publication's deals page, and she has also written multiple front-page stories.

Prior to joining Mint in 2024, she worked out of Reuters’ Bengaluru bureau where she extensively covered the travel, transportation, and logistics industries. Across both her stints, Priyamvada has displayed rigour for breaking news and analyzing interesting data-driven trends. She holds a postgraduate diploma from the Asian College of Journalism's Bloomberg programme. In her free time, she enjoys reading books and trying out different cuisines. She is keen to delve deeper into the various sectors she covers and is always up for a chat. You can reach out to her at priyamvada.c@livemint.com.

Sneha Shah

Sneha Shah is the editor for deals and startups at Mint. Starting off her career in India’s financial capital as a cub reporter for the Mid-day newspaper in the mid-2000s, she later moved on to decode balance sheets and follow the money trail for some of the leading pink publications in the country. She has been covering India’s deals ecosystem for nearly two decades now, closely tracking private- and public-market funding, startups, private equity, venture capital, and investment banking. From breaking some of the biggest deal stories of the past to doing some incisive deep-dives into the latest trends and turnarounds in the industry, she has witnessed the phenomenal growth and transformation of the country’s investment ecosystem from really close quarters. A graduate in journalism, she has worked with The Economic Times, Financial Chronicle, VCCircle and Mid-Day before starting her second stint at Mint in 2022. As a keen observer of India’s startups ecosystem, she aspires to write a book some day, chronicling some of the most inspiring stories the industry has seen so far in its remarkable journey.