New Delhi,  India Inc saw a robust rise in monthly deals in January 2022 with M&A segment's volumes rising by 100 per cent on a year-on-year basis.

"The year 2022 commenced with the third wave of Covid-19, thereby heightening the uncertainty in the economy. However, the much-awaited Budget gave India Inc a lot of clarity on many sectors, which are aimed at boosting growth," said Shanthi Vijetha, Partner, Grant Thornton Bharat.

"Some of them are PM GatiShakti, productivity enhancement and investment, sunrise opportunities, energy transition and climate action, and financing of investments. These measures will further give a push to the deal activity in the coming months."

As per Grant Thornton Bharat, the M&A deal volumes witnessed a 100 per cent increase compared to January 2021 on account of over 2x increase in the domestic deal activity and 78 per cent increase in cross-border deal volumes.

However, deal values witnessed 46 per cent decline as cross-border deal values of January 2022 witnessed drastic fall owing to witnessing the Total SE-Adani Power deal valued at $2.5 billion in January 2021.

Besides, M&A deal volumes also marked the highest monthly volumes recording 68 deals since March 2012, which saw 71 deals.

Besides, the deal tracker report showed that PE investment values recorded at $3.4 billion in January 2022 across 174 deals.

"This translated to a significant 182 per cent increase in the deal values and 100 per cent growth in deal volumes compared with January 2021," the deal tracker report said.

"The uptrend in the deal activity was on the back of seven high-value investments valued at and over $100 million and 10 deals valued between $50-99 million, compared to only three and four such deals, respectively, witnessed in January 2021."

It said that the startup sector continued to drive the PE deal volumes and values for January 2022 with 63 per cent share of PE volumes with investment values of $1.4 billion.

In addition, the report said that the month witnessed the emergence of four unicorns -- GlobalBees (a startup, which is the second Thrasio-styled startup to turn into a unicorn after Mensa Brands), LEAD School (Education), Darwinbox (IT and ITeS) and Mamaearth (e-commerce).