Ares: the private-credit powerhouse quietly building across India

Ares Management Corporation is a Los Angeles-based global alternative investment manager operating across credit, private equity and real estate. Founded in 1997 by Antony Ressler, Michael Arougheti, David Kaplan, John Kissick and Bennett Rosenthal — several of them Apollo alumni — the firm has grown into a $671 billion platform with more than 60 offices, around 4,400 employees and close to 2,900 direct institutional relationships.

Ares is best known as a dominant force in private credit. Its flagship Ares Capital Corporation, established in 2004, is one of the largest business development companies in the United States, financing middle-market acquisitions, recapitalisations and leveraged buyouts. The firm's credit strategies span direct lending, special situations, asset-backed finance and CLOs. Deal flow remains enormous: in the second quarter of 2026 alone, Ares raised a record $36 billion, and it recently committed $2 billion of a $6.5 billion multi-jurisdiction debt facility for Phoenix Tower International, alongside one of the largest second-lien direct loans in recent memory — a $2.2 billion financing backing MedImpact's acquisition of Medical Card System.

The firm's growth in Asia includes India. Ares maintains a New Delhi office — operated through a local relationship that sources, acquires and manages investments for Ares Asia — and it has been expanding its presence in India's booming private-credit market alongside rivals such as Cerberus and Davidson Kempner. The opportunity is structural: as Indian banks and non-bank lenders retrench under tighter regulation, global alternative managers are stepping in to fund mid-sized and lower-rated borrowers that traditional lenders will not touch.

Ares is led by CEO and co-founder Michael Arougheti, who describes the business as "built on trust and relationships" — with investors, colleagues and portfolio companies alike. Its client base spans more than 3,500 institutions, including over 480 insurance companies, plus a fast-growing roster of financial advisers and wealth-management professionals as private markets open up to individual investors.

Beyond credit, Ares runs meaningful private equity, real estate and infrastructure platforms, including secondaries and special-opportunities strategies. Its recent activity in infrastructure credit — the firm reports $29.9 billion in infrastructure AUM — shows how the lines between private credit and project finance are blurring, a trend with direct relevance for India's trillion-dollar infrastructure build-out.

For Indian founders, Ares sits at the growth-and-late-stage end of the market: its typical borrowers are established companies with cash flows, not early startups. But the firm's expanding footprint in India is good news for the whole funding stack. As global credit managers like Ares compete for Indian deals, lending standards, structures and pricing all mature — making venture debt and growth credit more accessible and better priced for founders who do not want to dilute further.