Built. Backed. Now Returning

Why India’s $180B AIF market is entering its realisation phase, and other insights from the third edition of No Ifs About AIFs.

Dear Reader,

The first edition asked whether India’s private markets could deliver. The second asked whether that delivery could hold across cycles.

The third moves beyond the question. It shows. And then it asks what comes next.

Every year, Oister and Crisil come together to benchmark how India’s AIF ecosystem is performing beyond the narrative. No Ifs About AIFs was built to bring transparency and trust to private markets through rigorous, comparable performance measurement.

Over the last two editions, many of you helped make this report part of the ecosystem itself. You shared it, debated it, and in some cases used it to ask harder questions of the funds you back. That engagement is a big reason No Ifs About AIFs has grown into a seminal industry benchmark, and a reference point that keeps showing up in allocator conversations.

India now stands at a consequential moment. A defining decade of growth is unfolding in a more demanding global environment, and private markets will be judged increasingly on outcomes.

As we built this third edition, it became clear that benchmarking alone was no longer enough. Performance still matters. Discipline still drives alpha. But as the ecosystem scales, liquidity becomes central. Outcomes now depend on how capital exits, recycles, and compounds.

This edition reflects that. It continues to benchmark performance, and it also examines liquidity, secondaries, realisation multiples, and the persistence of returns with a sharper lens.

We know the full report takes time, and we hope you will read it end to end when you can. In the meantime, we have curated the parts we would send a friend first: the charts that clarify what is working, what is changing, and what is starting to matter more. The full report is here when you are ready.

• This Is What Critical Mass Looks Like

  India built a ₹15 lakh crore private capital engine (AIFs) in under a decade

  And the commitments have compounded at ~30.7% CAGR
  Category I and II alone have grown at ~27.9% CAGR, reflecting allocator preference for equity and growth strategies.

  

• The Usual Suspects Have New Company

  Over the past decade, India’s private markets have meaningfully diversified. The top five sectors’ share of deal value fell from 85.83% in FY15 to 66.31% in FY25 . Consumer and related tech dropped from 58% to ~25%, while financial services and fintech doubled from 7% to 14%.

  Chart Reference: Compare the 2015 vs. 2025 “Sector Pie” on Page 13.

  

• The Exception Has Become Routine.

  ₹500mn+ deals aren’t the exception, now they make up 30% of observed deal flow

  The share of deals above ₹500mn rose from ~18% (91 deals) in FY15 to 30% (185 deals) in FY25; these large deals made up ~90% of total deal value in FY25.

  Chart PG 14

  

• Persistent Outperformance

  Across cycles, private market equity funds have consistently outperformed public benchmarks. The aggregated benchmark delivered an average alpha of ~8.69% over the BSE Sensex TRI across the last seven benchmarking cycles.

  CHART – Page 28

  

• When The Going Gets Tough, The Tough Gets Going.

  Returns are not evenly distributed. The right managers materially outperform.

  While the overall AIF benchmark delivered ~8.7% alpha over public markets, the top half of managers generated 13.6% alpha, a very different outcome.

  And when it comes to real money back, top-quartile funds that fully returned capital delivered an average 3.49x DPI, versus ~2.03x at the aggregate level.

  

• It’s Coming Back

  Over 80% of the equity AIF schemes we benchmarked have now made distributions. Even better? More than 25% have already hit a DPI of 1.0x or higher.

  

• Yeh Dil Maange More

  AIF capital pool is now majority-Domestic
  Domestic participation in Category I & II AIFs rose from 50.3% (Mar ’24) to 55.3% (Sep ’25), with ₹1.14 lakh crore of incremental domestic inflows.

  Chart pg 20

  

• No Second Thoughts About Secondaries

  Over the past five years, the average secondary deal size in India has increased from ₹2.28 billion to ₹8.39 billion, a 3.7x rise that signals a clear shift toward institutional-scale transactions.

  Secondary deal value reached approximately ₹377 billion in FY25, and the first half of FY26 alone has already recorded around ₹361 billion in secondary transactions.

  Chart PG 34

  

• The Secondary Opportunity Set Is Thickening

  Half of Tracked Funded Startups Are Entering Liquidity Windows.
  201 startups have moved from early-stage to growth in just 2–5 years.
  That pace points to $26–$52B of secondary supply potentially ripening over 3–4 years.

  Chart pg 35

  

We recently had the privilege of presenting this report to India’s Honourable Finance Minister, Smt. Nirmala Sitharaman. We see that moment as a reflection of how far India’s private markets have progressed. The conversation around private capital is now central to the country’s economic development, and we are grateful to contribute to it through this work.

The evidence points in one direction. India has the institutional foundation, the policy alignment, and the domestic savings base to deepen private markets at scale. What comes next is execution and the headroom to do more is real.

Trust follows transparency. That is why this report exists, and why we will keep doing it.

To everyone in the Unlisted Intel community, who reads carefully, shares generously, and pushes back when the data deserves harder questions, thank you. You are what keeps this report honest. We would love to hear your thoughts, as always.

Download the full report here

See you in March!

Jai Hind

Chief Brand & Investor Relations Officer

Sneha Dadrwal

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: What is the ‘No Ifs About AIFs’ report?

A: Oister x CRISIL’s annual benchmark of how India’s AIF ecosystem is performing, using a consistent measurement framework.

Q: Who is this report meant for?

A: LPs, family offices, HNIs, investment teams, and fund managers tracking outcomes in India’s private markets.

Q: What’s the big shift this edition is calling out?

A: The conversation is moving from fundraising and deployment to exits, cash returns, and recycling of capital.

Q: Why are secondaries featured so prominently this year?

A: Because secondaries are becoming a mainstream path to liquidity, pricing discovery, and portfolio rebalancing.

Q: Is domestic capital changing the market’s behavior?

A: Yes. A larger domestic LP base reduces reliance on foreign inflows, softens risk-on/risk-off whiplash, and makes fundraising and liquidity less hostage to global cycles.