Singaporean investment firm, Temasek, is betting big on India. It has earmarked $10 billion investment in India by 2026-27, out of which $6 billion has already been deployed. Temasek is also confident in meeting its investment targets, thanks to India’s robust domestic consumption and resilience to geopolitical shifts.
Vishesh Shrivastav, MD of Temasek’s told Times of India that India is “fairly shielded against global geopolitical shifts and macro uncertainties on the back of robust domestic consumption”. This raises the prospects for the investors in India, he said.
One of the biggest risks that the firm is facing is geopolitics, said Shrivastav. The firm that is focusing on digitisation, consumption, increasing lifespan (healthcare), and sustainable living (EV) wants to build a robust and resilient portfolio that is less impacted by stocks and where the range of outcomes is narrow.
“India is somewhat unique in the sense that it\’s an economy with few dependencies on the external world. It’s mostly a domestic economy, and our portfolio reflects that,” he told the daily.
India accounts for 8 per cent of Temasek’s portfolio with investments in Axis Bank, Haldiram’s, Eternal (formerly Zomato), Lenskart etc.
Not only the resilience to geopolitical shifts, India also has a market with young, aspirational consumers and good macros.
Shrivastav said that the ebay companies they have invested in keep compounding over many years and there is no reason to exit them just because the fund life is over. “We invested in Zomato when it was a very small company, and it was one of our best performers,” Shrivastav said.
