Global majors, PE players pick up a larger slice of debt-laden Indian firms

Ballooning debt forces more and more Indian promoters to sell majority stakes

Max group Chairman Analjit Singh makes no bones about why he sold two of his flagship companies to foreign private equity funds. The hospital business requires scale and that means pots of money which made it better suited to the big boys; it faced regulatory and political risks (one hospital was forcibly closed by the Delhi government); and his children were not interested.

Last December, Singh, an entrepreneur who built his empire from scratch, sold his chain of 13 hospitals to PE major KKR-backed Radiant Life Sciences and followed it up in February by selling his 51 per cent stake in