While startup founders have been wary of taking the public markets plunge at an early stage, a change in the trend has been afoot
In the last few months, four early stage startups — Yudiz, Menhood, Trust Fintech and TAC Infosec — have listed on NSE Emerge
As per Titan Capital’s cofounder, retail investors are keen to see startups take the public route early on so that they also get a share of their growth pie
Amid the ongoing startup IPO boom, AceVector Group and venture capital (VC) firm Titan Capital’s cofounder Rohit Bansal believes that Indian startups’ perception towards public markets is set to undergo a paradigm shift.
“I expect a large number of Indian startups to go public early in the next few years. I also believe the current fixation of startups zooming their toplines before taking the IPO plunge is also set to change as more companies will look at listing at earlier stages,” Bansal said during Inc42’s D2C Summit’s panel discussion on “Decoding The Great Indian Retail Opportunity”.
While startup founders have been wary of taking the public markets plunge at an early stage, a change in the trend has been afoot. In the last few months, four early stage startups — Yudiz, Menhood, Trust Fintech and TAC Infosec — have listed on NSE Emerge.
More recently, Jaipur-based D2C men’s grooming brand Menhood made its public market debut on the NSE Emerge.
Bansal’s comments come at a time when one of his early investments, Unicommerce, is all set to list on the Indian bourses.
On August 8, Unicommerce’s IPO was subscribed 168.35X. The startup’s IPO consists only of an offer for sale (OFS) component of 2.56 Cr shares.
Besides the startup’s listing, Ola Electric and FirstCry are set to make their public market debut soon.
Among the two, Ola Electric continues to be a loss-making entity. Its net loss zoomed 7.6% to INR 1,584.4 Cr in the financial year 2023-24 (FY24) from INR 1,472.1 Cr in the previous year. Meanwhile, Ola Electric’s operating revenue jumped over 90% to INR 5,009.8 Cr during the year under review from INR 2,630.9 Cr in FY23.
Despite being a loss-making entity, the startup’s IPO saw decent investor interest and was oversubscribed by 4.27X.
On this, Bansal said that retail investors are keen to see startups take the public route early on so that they also get a share of their growth pie.
The D2C Summit is presented by Broadway, co-presented by Simpl and Emiza, powered by Venture Catalysts++, Zippee, Pay10 and Mobavenue, along with associate partners NITRO and Rukam Capital.
