Entry of startups into IPO market a huge positive: Peak XV’s Mohit Bhatnagar

The single biggest positive thing that has happened in the Indian startup ecosystem is that the initial public offerings (IPO) markets are now open for startups to consider, Mohit Bhatnagar, managing director at Peak XV Partners, said on Thursday.

“The Indian stock market has not only accepted all these startups that have now gone public, allowing investors like Peak XV and others to distribute large exits and then invite the next set of capital from our LPs (limited partners), but interestingly, it has come from domestic investments,” he said at the India Digital Summit 2025 held in New Delhi.

“We have 40–45 startups that are public, and close to 30 of them went public during the pandemic,” he added.

An IPO market, according to Bhatnagar, enables founders to create long-lasting, independent companies that can thrive beyond their leadership.

“Someone who is building a company to flip it for M&A is probably not as attractive as someone who says I want to one day go public,” he said.

ET reported on December 24 that risk investors generated exits worth over $5 billion from Indian startups last year through secondary transactions, offers for sale in IPOs and public market block deals, and that the number of new-age IPOs is likely to at least double in 2025 from nine in 2024.

Some of the companies that went public in 2024 include Awfis, Ixigo, Go Digit General Insurance, FirstCry, Ola Electric and Swiggy. However, not every company deserves to go public, he said while highlighting that a public company must meet high standards, including profitability or a clear path to it, and predictability to keep retail investors informed.

“At Peak XV, we used to see that about 20% of the Nasdaq was made up of startups that emerged from the Peak XV fold. In India, this number is still relatively small—around 3% of the Indian public markets consist of startups. I predict that over the next decade, this figure could reach double digits on the back of all these very interesting companies that are getting so large,” he added.