From boAt to Zepto: Over 20 new-age firms gear up for 2026 IPOs as late-stage funding shrinks

This build-up comes as late-stage private capital remains constrained and more scaled companies are considering public markets as their most realistic route for funding, liquidity and valuation discovery.

“When you have no late-stage private funding, that’s when people go IPO. The private markets are far more forgiving than public markets… When that tap tightens, exits start happening in the public markets,” said Deepak Shenoy, founder of Capitalmind.

Late-stage funding among Indian startups declined by almost eight percent year-on-year to $7.39 billion across 371 deals in 2025, from $8 billion across 412 deals the previous year, according to Venture Intelligence — a drop that accelerated the IPO push in 2025 and is now shaping plans for 2026.

What’s driving confidence among companies looking to list?

India’s public markets have absorbed new-age IPOs far more consistently than the 2021–22 cycle. Companies that listed in 2025 did so at stronger profitability levels, cleaner unit economics and tighter cost structures, Moneycontrol reported earlier.

As per a Moneycontrol analysis, 15 new-age IPOs raised close to Rs 40,000 crore in 2025, more than 35 percent higher than the Rs 29,000 crore raised across 13 listings in 2024.

Crucially, the capital raised was split almost evenly between fresh issues and offer-for-sale (OFS) blocks — allowing companies to fund expansion while also giving early investors and founders meaningful liquidity.

What sectors dominate the 2026 queue?

Fintech, ecommerce and logistics firms form the bulk of the pipeline. PhonePe, PayU, Shiprocket, Shadowfax, InCred, Aye Finance and Turtlemint are expected to drive activity.

Consumer and brand-led platforms — boAt, Curefoods and Zepto — are also positioned to draw significant interest, while B2B heavyweights such as Infra.Market, OfBusiness, Captain Fresh, Fractal and Zetwork point to rising public-market appetite for enterprise tech and supply-chain platforms.

Analysts at Bajaj Broking Research said the breadth of the pipeline reflects a structural shift rather than a one-off response to liquidity conditions. “2025 marks the start of a more sustained IPO cycle for new-age companies, supported by deeper domestic participation and a growing pool of mature startups,” they noted.

Why are founders turning to public markets earlier?

For many founders and investors, IPOs are increasingly being considered earlier in the company lifecycle — not as a distress outcome, but as a strategic choice.

“When we started investing in India aggressively in 2017, 2018, there was no company which had done an IPO. But now… I think today we are competing actually against the IPO market as well,” Sumer Juneja, Managing Partner at SoftBank Investment Advisers, told Moneycontrol earlier, adding that public-market capital has been “phenomenal for the ecosystem”.

As private valuations compress and late-stage capital becomes more selective, public markets are emerging as the primary arena for large-scale capital formation and exits.

What does the growing pipeline signal?

After a year in which new-age firms raised close to Rs 40,000 crore through public listings, the expanding 2026 pipeline signals that IPOs are becoming a structural feature of India’s startup lifecycle.

Rather than a cyclical funding workaround, public markets are increasingly where scale-stage companies are choosing to grow, exit and reset valuations.