Mint Investment Awards 2026: HDFC's Aditya Puri, Bharti Airtel win top honours

Aditya Puri, former managing director of HDFC Bank, was presented with the Lifetime Achievement Award at the recently concluded Mint India Investment Awards 2026. The awards ceremony recognized corporate transactions, fund performance, and business leadership over the past year.

The awards also recognized institutional achievements. Bharti Airtel was declared the Company of the Year. Kotak Mahindra Capital Co. was awarded Dealmaker of the Year.

Within the private equity (PE) categories, KKR’s $1.4 billion exit from JB Pharma was awarded PE Exit of the Year, while TPG’s $1 billion investment in TCS Hypervault was named PE Investment of the Year.

In the venture capital segment, Peak XV’s partial exit through the initial public offering of Groww, where it clocked a 75x return worth $790 million, was recognized as the VC Exit of the Year. Westbridge’s $200 million investment in mobility firm Rapido won the VC Investment of the Year.

The awards were presented to the winners by M. Damodaran, chairperson, Excellence Enablers Pvt, and Ravi Krishnan, editor in chief, Mint.

The evaluation process followed a defined methodology. For the investment awards, transaction data was sourced directly from Tracxn. The largest deals executed during the past year were taken into consideration and subsequently split into different assessment categories.

For the Company of the Year award, the jury considered promoter-led companies listed within the BSE100 index. These companies were assessed on the basis of shareholder value creation, operating performance and growth, capital allocation effectiveness, balance sheet and risk architecture, and corporate governance and transparency.