India’s Evolving Position in Global Trade
Over the last few years, India has shifted from a cautious stance on free‑trade agreements to executing a sequence of strategically designed pacts:
• UAE CEPA (in force since May 2022), providing tariff elimination on over 80% of product lines.
• Australia ECTA (in force since December 2022).
• EFTA–India TEPA (signed March 2024; in force from Oct 1,2025), including a first‑of‑its‑kind, legally binding pledge of USD 100 billion in investments and 1 million direct jobs over 15 years.
• UK FTA, signed in July 2025.
• Oman FTA, signed in December 2025.
• New Zealand, where negotiations were concluded in December 2025 (agreement pending formal signing).
Most notably India and the EU recently announced the conclusion of negotiations on their long‑awaited FTA, described by European leaders as the “mother of all deals.” While the agreement has not yet been signed and must undergo legal vetting and ratification over the coming months, the political and economic commitment on both sides is clear.
These deals go beyond tariff reductions, increasingly bundling services, investment frameworks, digital standards, mobility agreements, sustainable development, and supply‑chain diversification. For global investors, they meaningfully de‑risk access to a 1.4‑billion‑consumer market while enabling companies to diversify away from concentrated manufacturing geographies.
A Macro Story That Is Structural, Not Cyclical
India is delivering 7%+ real GDP growth in FY25, placing it among the fastest‑growing major economies globally. This momentum rests not on transient macro cycles, but on structural engines:
• IT and digital services, already ~7.5% of GDP and moving toward 10% as global tech spending accelerates and AI‑driven demand rises.
• A young, English‑speaking workforce powering global capability centres, software exports, and business‑services offshoring.
• A rapidly expanding digital public infrastructure, enabling low‑cost payments, onboarding, logistics and formalisation at population scale.
This combination — talent depth, digital rails, and increasingly open trade architecture — positions India as a long‑horizon compounding story rather than a tactical macro trade.
Global Allocators Are Responding
Large global institutions have taken note. BlackRock, for example, has explicitly highlighted India as a standout within emerging markets, overweighting the country as a beneficiary of demographic momentum, digitisation and AI adoption, part of what it calls long‑term “mega forces” driving capital flows. These themes reinforce India’s rising weight in EM indices and its status as the world’s fastest‑growing large economy.
Private Credit: A High‑Growth, Low‑Correlation Access Point to India
Against this backdrop, private credit is emerging as a crucial enabler of India’s real‑economy expansion.
At Ascertis Credit, we work with entrepreneurs and promoter‑led businesses navigating situations where bank lending, capital markets and business objectives do not align. Private credit provides:
• Bespoke refinancing and capex solutions
• Capital for capacity expansion and technology investment
• Support through market dislocations without equity dilution
• Predictable, cash‑flow‑backed returns with strong covenants and collateral coverage
For global investors, India’s performing private‑credit market offers high‑yielding exposure to a large and resilient domestic economy — with significantly lower correlation to public‑market volatility.
Why India Should Be a Core Portfolio Allocation
A country that is:
• concluding and signing high‑quality trade agreements across major economic blocs,
• navigating global tariff and geopolitical frictions with strategic calm,
• compounding GDP at 7%+,
• exporting IT, digital infrastructure and STEM talent to the world; and
• expanding its institutional market depth…
…is no longer “another emerging market.” It is a core long‑term allocation.
Within that framework, India’s maturing private‑credit ecosystem offers a timely, scalable way to participate in this growth — through real‑economy, cash‑flow‑generating credit rather than relying solely on listed equity beta.
