Mumbai: From technology to automobiles to pharmaceuticals, Indian companies are scaling up their global ambitions like never before.
They are using large acquisitions overseas to quickly scale, deliver higher value products and compete on the global stage. The latest one—Sun Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd’s $11.75 billion acquisition of US-based specialty drugmaker Organon & Co, second only to the Tata Steel's $12-billion purchase of Corus Group nearly two decades ago, caps a year of such bold bets.
Whether it is Coforge Ltd’s $2.39 billion buyout of California-based Encora, Tata Motors Ltd’s $4.5 billion bet on Italy’s Iveco, or Bajaj Auto Ltd’s $906 million acquisition of its long-time Austrian partner KTM, Indian companies are spending top dollar on acquiring companies overseas, which give them access to technology and newer markets.
Coforge is an IT services provider that caters to legacy companies. (California-headquartered) Encora is a digital engineering firm that develops products for digital-native companies. Acquiring Encora in what is the largest acquisition in India’s information technology (IT) sector gives Coforge a footing in the products market at a time when artificial intelligence (AI) threatens to upend the services business. Encora is expected to boost Coforge's data and cloud services.
“When we add this asset and we look at what the firm becomes, we become a $2.5-billion tech services firm with a core $2 billion coming from AI-led engineering data and cloud services alone,” Sudhir Singh, the chief executive of Coforge said in a statement in December 2025, when the company announced the deal.
Similarly, Tata Motors is India’s largest maker of commercial vehicles such as trucks, buses and pick-ups. It announced the acquisition of Italy-based Iveco in July 2025 in what would be the largest deal in India’s automotive sector till date. The transaction gives Tata access to the Latin American market, where Iveco maintains a strong presence. Moreover, the company also gets access to newer products such as tractor trailers and heavy-duty deep mining tippers developed by Iveco. Tata will also get access to Iveco's vehicle platforms.
Justifying the rationale of the deal in July to investors and analysts, the company’s management noted that in stable large businesses, growth is won through large acquisitions. “Market shares are highly stable in the commercial vehicle business. It is not a very disruptive business. Diversification of cash flows is important to maintain growth in the business,” P.B. Balaji, the then former chief financial officer of Tata Motors had said.
The ambition to acquire an international asset also spread to the two-wheeler space where Bajaj Auto acquired a 75% stake in the parent of premium bike brand KTM in a $906 million debt deal in May 2025. The company infused $226 million into the company through convertible bonds and loans, while the rest of the amount was deployed through debt funding.
Through the acquisition of KTM, Bajaj got itself premium motorcycle manufacturing capabilities and an access to markets like Europe and North America. The acquisition also gives Bajaj a geographically diverse manufacturing base with KTM's plants in Austria, China and Brazil.
“This twin move of taking ownership (subject to approvals) and paring down debt by providing liquidity at a crucial stage, positions Bajaj Auto as a driving force in shaping the future of one of the world’s most admired high-performance motorcycle companies,” Bajaj Auto had said on the deal.
The buyout of Organon by Sun Pharma, announced on Monday, gives the Indian buyer an access to scale, products and markets. Together, the two will become one of the world's 25 largest pharmaceutical companies and Sun will get access to key markets such as Europe, China and Brazil. More importantly, the company can skip years of research and development to become a top-10 player globally in the biosimilars market with access to Organon’s development pipeline.
“What is important for me is that it [the deal] gives us a global presence, it gives us the ability to license products globally, and launch many of the products that we already have in our pipeline in many geographies that we are not currently present in," Dilip Shanghvi, the executive chair of Sun Pharma, said in Mumbai on Monday.
Experts see these large global moves as a shift in dealmaking strategy. “Indian enterprise today is no longer tentative—it is tectonic,” said Monish G. Chatrath, managing partner at MGC Global Risk Advisory.
The coming together of Encora and Coforge reflected a blending of capability and scale, bringing Indian firms closer to the heart of global decision-making, he said. In pharmaceuticals, Sun Pharma is stepping forward with innovation-led portfolios, strengthening its global relevance, while in the automotive space, Tata Motors and Bajaj Auto are demonstrating how Indian brands can simultaneously lead in aspiration and accessibility.
“What emerges is a pattern unmistakable and unignorable: capital is being deployed with conviction, capabilities are being curated with precision and global markets are being approached not with diffidence, but with design,” Chatrath said.
Home front abuzz too
While these four deals underscore Indian companies’ global ambitions, dealmaking over the past year has been equally decisive at home. JSW Paints’ $1.6 billion acquisition of the Indian business of AkzoNobel last June quickly positioned the JSW Group firm among the leaders in the domestic paints market.
Then, the Bajaj Group moved to consolidate its insurance ventures, acquiring a 23% stake from Allianz SE for $2.6 billion. The deal puts the group on course to take full control of Bajaj Allianz General Insurance and Bajaj Allianz Life Insurance, signalling a shift towards backing the business with its own capital rather than tapping the public markets to provide an exit to its long-term partner.
Not to be left behind, in the renewable energy space, state-owned Oil and Natural Gas Corp Ltd and NTPC Green Energy Ltd jointly acquired Ayana Renewable Power for about $2.3 billion last March, making it the largest deal in the renewable energy space in a year.
While companies are betting on bolder acquisitions, they are also munching on more debt. From Tata Motors taking a bridge loan of $4.5 million to KTM's $550 million loan from consortium of banks, the debt pile-up suggests that execution of plans to make these acquisitions succeed become all the more crucial for these companies.
(Inputs from Jessica Jani)