After a year sitting on a billion-dollar pile of cash commitments for India, The Blackstone Group appears to be ready to make a move. Akhil Gupta, the private equity firm’s chairman in India, told Bloomberg News that Blackstone has been biding its time while the market boomed in the world’s fourth-largest economy, because there were better targets elsewhere. “When the market goes up like crazy like it did last year,” Gupta said, “it affects our ability to do deals.” With the Indian market drooping now, it will be easier to find investment opportunities and Blackstone expects to launch a US$500 million India-focused fund, perhaps later this year. But Blackstone will certainly have company now, not only from fellow p.e. firms such as The Carlyle Group and Warburg Pincus but also hedge funds, such as Farallon Capital Management and Old Lane, which are increasingly behaving like their p.e. cousins. Meanwhile, Blackstone reportedly will decide in the next three months whether to add to the existing 11-member private equity staff currently in India. Gupta sounds ambitious: When the fund finally launches, he hopes to make single investments of $25 million and reap returns of 25%, mainly from investing in listed companies and “all real estate sectors and geographies” in India.