Indian startups and investors warm up to domestic IPOs

The public listing of E2E Networks and SoftTech may be small, but they point towards a new kind of startup exit in India

This month, two venture capital-backed tech startups got listed on NSE Emerge

These listings, the first of their kind, are a harbinger of a new kind of startup exit

Until now, it has been tough for early VCs to get exits in India

Other VCs and founders are now also considering listing on these SME bourses

It’s a Tuesday morning. 15 May. While the entire nation has its eyes glued to news channels, waiting for the outcome of the Karnataka elections, there is a listing ceremony going on in the NSE auditorium in Mumbai. On the face of it, there’s nothing exceptional about it.

E2E Networks, a Haryana-based cloud computing startup, gets listed on the NSE Emerge platform, becoming the second venture capital-backed company to do so this month. The first, Pune-based SoftTech Engineers, a software company that caters to the architecture, engineering, and construction (AEC) verticals, was listed on 11 May.

In the midst of commotion caused by Walmart’s acquisition of Flipkart and the state election in Karnataka, the story of these two small-ticket initial public offerings (IPOs) didn’t get much attention.

AUTHOR

Sidhartha Shukla

In his earlier stint at Moneycontrol, the website owned by the Network18 group, Sid wrote on cryptocurrencies, cybersecurity, business, and finance. Born in Raipur, Chhattisgarh, Sid has spent most of his life in Jalandhar, Punjab. He has a BSc in Mathematics from St Xavier’s College, Mumbai. Sid is a comic book nerd and a big fan of Alan Moore, Neil Gaiman and Brian Azzarello. He can be reached at sidhartha at the rate the-ken.com

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