STARTUPS' WEALTH PLAY

BESIDES DIRECT HOLDINGS, FOUNDERS ARE INCREASINGLY TURNING TO TRUSTS AND FAMILY OFFICES TO BUILD LONG-TERM WEALTH.

- RUKMINI RAO

In 2011, Bengaluru-headquartered mobile advertising firm InMobi made history by becoming India's first startup unicorn after securing $200-million funding from Japanese investor SoftBank.

A year later, in 2012, homegrown e-commerce company Flipkart followed suit.

In May 2018, six years after Flipkart became a unicorn, U.S. multinational Walmart acquired an initial 77% stake in the company for $16 billion, in one of the largest e-commerce deals globally. Of the two co-founders, Sachin Bansal exited completely, selling his 5.5% stake and raking in over $1 billion. Binny Bansal retained a little over 4% initially, but later sold his shares in phases, eventually earning an estimated $1.5 billion.

In 2021, Indian startups scripted history again—Zomato's ₹9,375-crore IPO marked the first unicorn listing, while Paytm's ₹18,300-crore issue became the country's largest, surpassing Coal India's ₹15,199 crore in 2010. All these reflected strong investor appetite for ventures led by new-age entrepreneurs.

According to a recent report by The Rainmaker Group (TRMG), an investment bank focussed exclusively on the private market, in FY25, Indian startups raised over ₹44,000 crore from the public markets via IPOs, follow-on public offers (FPOs), qualified institutional placements (QIPs), and over ₹20,000 crore in secondary exits for PE/VCs through block and bulk deals. “The public market has become the preferred playground for India’s breakout companies. We've now seen the full arc—the IPO frenzy, the valuation winter, and now a clear re-rating driven by fundamentals. This is the age of seasoning. The market is no longer listening to stories, it’s pricing in substance,” says Kashyap Chanchani, managing partner, TRMG.

Public vs private markets

The recent wave of startup IPOs in India highlights how public markets assess new-age businesses, often revealing a stark contrast in pricing compared to the private markets.