In 2007, the year ChrysCapital first wrote a cheque to Mankind Pharma, the drugmaker was in the public eye for its Manforce brand of condoms. It had become a full-fledged pharma company by the time the private equity (PE) firm exited in 2015.

Along the way, Mankind, nudged by ChrysCapital, got into chronic therapies and stepped out of its small-town comfort zone. Today, nearly a third of Mankind’s business comes from chronic therapies and metros bring in two-thirds of its revenues. The company also acquired Bollywood icon Amitabh Bachchan as its corporate brand ambassador, while actor Sunny Leone came on board as the face of its condom brand.

“Truly transformative,” says Mankind’s global CFO, Ashutosh Dhawan, describing the repositioning, “especially in shaping product strategy and sharpening our thinking on how to build big, profitable brands”.

Mankind was not the only party in this relationship to reap the benefits. ChrysCapital’s initial ₹100 crore investment yielded 11 times more in returns when it exited Mankind in 2015, selling its stake to Capital International.

“That growth did not happen by accident,” adds Dhawan. “ChrysCapital had strong domain knowledge in pharma, so it was able to guide and mentor us effectively.”

The PE firm returned to Mankind in 2018, picking up a 10 percent stake, trimmed its position in the company’s public float in 2023, and exited entirely by 2024. But it is ChrysCapital’s first stint with Mankind that presents a peek into the playbook the homegrown firm has followed—and helped write—as India’s PE sector took its first baby steps at the turn of the century, buoyed by the dotcom boom, rattled along through the global financial crisis of 2008, rode the waves of telecom and technology, and has now reached a place where deal sizes are larger, buyouts are burgeoning, and interest in India-focussed funds is at an all-time high.

A report by Equirus Capital says PE and venture capital (VC) investments in the country touched a three-year high of $26 billion in the first nine months of this calendar year, surpassing the combined figure for 2023 and 2024. This despite the high valuations commanded by the public markets, which tend to channel funds from PE to listed stocks.

ChrysCapital, for its part, raised its 10th and largest fund of $2.2 billion—the largest India-focussed fund anyone has raised—in November. What’s more, this fund has become its first to attract money from Indian investors, in addition to the usual sovereign and endowment funds from abroad, enhancing the Indianness of its appeal, which it has leveraged during its rise to becoming the largest homegrown PE firm. With $8.5 billion raised across its 10 PE funds, a continuation vehicle, and a public markets fund, ChrysCapital holds its own among the biggest global names in the fray, such as Blackstone, KKR, Warburg Pincus, Carlyle and Temasek.

The year was 1999, the dotcom boom was in full swing, and New York’s financial district hummed with the promise of easy money. Ashish Dhawan was 29 and on a lucrative ascent at Goldman Sachs, the Wall Street giant. He chose to walk away and boarded a plane to India with the audacious idea of importing Silicon Valley’s VC playbook into a market still seen as untested terrain.

Together with his Harvard batchmate Raj Kondur, Dhawan co-founded ChrysCapital (then called Chrysalis Capital). After the dotcom bubble burst, it did not take the duo long to realise the VC model did not work for them. They quickly transitioned to PE and began a journey of growth that has continued despite Dhawan’s exit from the company in 2012. Kondur had left in 2002 to start a business process outsourcing firm called Nirvana Business Solutions.

Through its PE funds, the firm has deployed $5.5 billion in more than 110........

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