India is nearing a tipping point for foreign capital, according to Blackstone President Jon Gray. He said this in an interview with Bloomberg Television’s Wall Street Week.
India is now Blackstone’s best private equity market in the world. The firm earns its highest returns here of any country. Blackstone manages about $1.3 trillion in assets globally.
This is a turnaround. Gray said Blackstone’s first push into India started slow and then stalled during the 2008 global financial crisis.
“We had sort of a skeleton crew. We didn’t really have a great defined strategy,” Gray said. “We couldn’t make the numbers work. So we did basically nothing.”
Blackstone then changed its plan. It began taking majority or equal-control stakes instead of small ones. It focused on three sectors: information technology services, commercial real estate and domestic manufacturing.
That shift made India the firm’s top market for private equity returns.
“It takes time to get to a stage where you can really begin to expand your growth rate,” Gray said. “And I do feel like India is getting closer and closer to that tipping point.”
The macro numbers explain the interest. India’s gross domestic product has grown almost fivefold to $3.69 trillion since 2005. The country has climbed from 14th place in the world economy to fourth, passing Germany, the UK and France.
India is home to 1.47 billion people. It became the world’s most populous country in 2023, passing China. Its economy grew 7.6% in fiscal 2026, according to the World Bank.
Talent is the other draw. Mohandas Pai, former chief financial officer of Infosys, said about 11 million people graduate from Indian colleges each year. That includes roughly 800,000 to 1 million engineers. Pai said about 500,000 of them are strong enough to train for the technology industry.
Gray flagged risks too. He pointed to US-India tariff disagreements and higher energy costs. “There will be bumps,” he said.
What this means for you: The largest global private equity firm is signalling more India capital, aimed at IT services, manufacturing and commercial real estate. Founders in those sectors should expect deeper pools of growth and control-stake money.
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