Temasek Sees Connected Homes, Smart Systems As Key Investment Themes In India

“These trends will dominate what the economy and behaviour of the people will look like,” Promeet Ghosh, deputy head of Temasek Holdings Pvt. said. “It is interesting that some of these are actually getting accentuated as we see the impact of Covid-19, in particular the two of them.”

Covid-19 is accelerating the adoption of technologies, and connected homes and smarter systems are going to be at the heart of evolution that companies will have to make, Ghosh said. “It’s fair to say it is not particular sectors but when we look at the companies, we do look at how these companies are going to not only deal with these trends but capitalise on them.”

Temasek has invested in excess of $10 billion in India, or about 4% of its S$306 billion ($225 billion) worth of total assets. By comparison, its investments in China exceed 29%.

The global firm has been cautious for the last few years. And India imposed one of the harshest lockdowns, stalling economic activity and causing a contraction of nearly 24% in April-June.

“But the short-term impact of Covid-19 is not going to deter us from making active investments out here [India],” said Ghosh. “We continue to be quite active and over the last six months we have closed several deals—the Rs 5,000-crore investments in L&T-Schneider deal, we closed our Pharmeasy transaction, we closed another round of financing through Zomato, another round of financing to UST Global.” And these are just the disclosed transactions.

“We have actually continued to invest across the companies including in the public markets,” Ghosh said. “Over the last six months we have invested well in excess of a billion dollars.”

Temasek, he said, is investing for the medium to long term, by when the underlying structural benefits of the country will come through. Ghosh, however, cautioned that it’s not clear how this will pan out. “It depends on future waves of the pandemic, it depends on future rollout of the vaccine. It is clear the economy will face headwinds.”

Also Read: Temasek’s China Exposure Surpasses Singapore for First Time

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