Private Equity Maven Jean Salata Takes Aim At India

This story is part of Forbes’ coverage of Hong Kong’s Richest 2025. See the full list here.

In December, EQT Private Capital Asia, an arm of Swedish private equity giant EQT, completed its purchase of Southeast Asian real estate platform Property-Guru, in an all-cash transaction valued at $1.1 billion. Big deals such as these helped to propel a one-third rise in shares of the Stockholm-listed parent in the past year, boosting the wealth of EQT Asia chairman Jean Salata to $7.8 billion.

Salata has lately set his sights on India, where EQT has invested over $6 billion in roughly a dozen companies. Last September, EQT acquired housing finance company Indostar Home Finance for 24 billion rupees ($210 million), committing an additional 5 billion rupees to fund its expansion. Three months later, in what was EQT Asia’s first infrastructure exit, it inked a $1.5 billion deal to sell renewable energy firm O2 Power, a joint venture with Singaporean sovereign wealth fund Temasek, to a unit of JSW Energy, led by Sajjan Jindal, the son of India’s richest woman, Savitri Jindal.

India is an “extremely attractive investment destination for international investors like us,” Salata said at a recent media event in Delhi, citing opportunities in sectors such as healthcare and financial services.