New Delhi, July 28 -- Nalanda Capital, a private equity-style investment firm started by former Warburg Pincus executive Pulak Prasad, has upped its faith in a new company it added to its India portfolio earlier this year, after clocking several exits over the past couple of years.
The investment firm, which has created a portfolio worth over $3 billion in India through deep-conviction bets on a clutch of small- and medium-sized publicly listed companies, has purchased an additional 2% stake in IndiaMART InterMESH Ltd for an estimated Rs 225-250 crore (around $23-25 million). The share purchases are believed to have been made since April.
This follows Nalanda Capital's acquisition of a 5.6% stake in the company via small tranches earlier this year. During the first three months of 2026, it had shelled out around Rs 700 crore via open market transactions.
With the latest investment, IndiaMART is now one of Nalanda Capital's largest principal bets. While several of Nalanda's portfolio companies are currently worth over Rs 1,000 crore each, most of them have gained value over time even as the actual investment value was much lower.
Nalanda's bet comes at a time when IndiaMART's stock has been under pressure. The company's shares have lost almost one-third of their value since touching a one-year high of Rs 2,772 in July last year.
The investment is believed to be the first time in almost four years that Nalanda has added a company to its portfolio. It last did so in early 2022, when it bought a stake in Jyothy Labs, according to publicly available data.
Nalanda currently has more than two dozen companies in its active portfolio. These include Advanced Enzyme, AIA Engineering, Berger Paints, Cera Sanitaryware, Genpact, Havells, Info Edge, MRF, Page Industries, and Thermax. It has exited more than a dozen companies, including Mindtree, WNS, Just Dial and Thyrocare.
The investment firm has also made several monetisation moves over the past couple of years.
Last year, it exited NYSE-listed business process outsourcing firm WNS, which was acquired by French technology major Capgemini, ending a 17-year holding period. The exit from WNS came soon after Nalanda sold a chunk of its remaining stake in Vaibhav Global Ltd, another legacy investment, albeit with a far inferior result. However, it had scored strong returns from another partial exit move in 2024. The firm also made a partial exit from GE Shipping and sold portions of its stake in several companies during the final quarter of 2023.
Nalanda invests through two entities: the 2007-vintage Nalanda India Fund and the 2011-vintage Nalanda India Equity Fund. According to a March 2025 disclosure by the firm, the gross asset value of the Nalanda India Fund was about $1.57 billion, while that of the Nalanda India Equity Fund was around $3.57 billion.
Prasad, an alumnus of IIT Delhi and IIM Ahmedabad, joined Warburg Pincus in 1998 from McKinsey & Co. He set up Nalanda in May 2007 along with Anand Sridharan, a former director at US-based PE firm Bessemer, former Warburg colleague AN Seshadri, former Merrill Lynch banker Ashish Patil and Gaurav Kothari.
Nalanda is not a typical PE firm. It invests only in publicly listed companies, like a mutual fund, but its investment style is more like a PE firm.
Usually, PE firms stay invested in portfolio companies for four-seven years, though they may exit sooner in certain cases and may stay invested for a longer period in others. Sometimes, they roll over the investment from one fund to another as they hit the life cycle of such funds.
In contrast, Nalanda considers itself to be a permanent part-owner of high-quality businesses. It invests exclusively in small- to mid-cap listed companies in India where it aims to be a large and long-term shareholder. Its strategy is to acquire at least 5% equity in portfolio companies.
Click here to find out more about Nalanda Capital's investment style.
Published by HT Digital Content Services with permission from VC Circle.