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Global and domestic institutions increasingly treat consumer-tech IPOs as part of their long-duration growth bucket, comparable to specialty retail or branded consumer platforms rather than traditional loss-making tech ventures. Retail investors, however, are engaging with offerings such as this in a structurally different risk environment.

Amidst the ambiguity, industry leaders opine that India's next big step should be toward a structured and modular regulatory framework.

With the proceeds from the fresh issuance, Meesho said it plans to scale its existing technology and cloud infrastructure, hire engineering and AI talent, alongside expand its marketing efforts.

Looking back on his early days as an entrepreneur, Bahl said that the difficult years in the restaurant business became the stepping stone for Veeba.

AI entering the pool has also turned out to be a curveball for investors, primarily because AI-first companies behave differently from traditional deep-tech, SaaS, or fintech businesses. Investor expectations of them are also significantly higher.

Despite the company boasting a strong market presence, with technology-backed manufacturing and fulfillment facilities in full swing, the muted company listing did not come as a surprise for many market experts, who had earlier expressed concerns over over-valuation and leaving little room for listing gains.

Existing investors such as PayPal, Mastercard, Actis Pine Labs Investment Holdings, and Peak XV Partners are set to offload their shares in the OFS, along with Pine Labs co-founder Lokvir Kapoor.

With the finals left for the Indian Women's team and Rodrigues to prove their mettle, we look back at her exclusive interview with Entrepreneur India from earlier this year, where Rodrigues speaks about early days, breaking into the first team, cricket for women, and the dreams that still live on.

According to the report, the third quarter recorded USD 11.7 billion in PE/VC investments, which was 20 per cent higher than its corresponding quarter in 2024, but 5 per cent lower than Q2 of 2025. The number of deals, however, was 11 per cent higher year-over-year (Y-o-Y), totaling 369 deals versus 331 in the third quarter of 2024.

The company's IPO is set to open on Friday, October 31, 2025. The price band is fixed at INR 382-402 at face value INR 2 each.

Finance commissions (FC) have steadily expanded the share of resources devolved to states, from 20.5 per cent in the 11th FC to 42 per cent in its 14th iteration – recorded as the largest increase in the country's history. The previous one held the share at 41 per cent while also accommodating the fiscal disruptions due to the pandemic.

The new Ola product will also be the first residential BESS in India, which is fully designed, engineered, and manufactured indigenously using tested automotive battery packs.

Chavan said that GeM acts like the "Amazon of the government procurement", describing it as a very successful experiment of the Indian government in terms of bringing together the industry, policy makers on a single platform, and generating business opportunities.

He also quoted data from the Centre of Science and Environment, according to which an unskilled worker loses anywhere between INR 7200-19,600 each year because of traffic, a skilled worker could lose up to INR 23,800, and a highly skilled worker could go beyond INR 30,000, pointing to the need for immediate decongestion in Bengaluru.

AI could add hundreds of billions to India's GDP over the coming decade if adoption accelerates, underpinning coordinated public and private investment plans.

Looking back on his early days as an entrepreneur, Bahl said that the difficult years in the restaurant business became the stepping stone for Veeba.

He pointed out that India's real entrepreneurial engine lies in its small and medium businesses, with the MSME sector having 67 million entrepreneurs producing 6–7 per cent of GDP.

Moderated by Punita Sabharwal, Managing Editor of Entrepreneur Media India, the conversation featured Arun Chittilappilly, Executive Chairman and Managing Director of Wonderla Holidays Ltd., and Harsh Binani, Co-Founder and Executive Director of Smartworks.

Homegrown brands have increasingly gained a foothold in Indian consumerism, with 58 per cent of the respondents saying that they like to shop for products mainly from local or small businesses, with 76 per cent of the group saying they appreciate authentic communication by local brands, along with innovative solutions for everyday problems.

To date, the sector has raised USD 989 million across 203 equity rounds, a steady expansion despite current cautious funding activity. India's Fitness Tech ecosystem is currently comprised of more than 600 active startups, of which 96 have secured equity funding.

The Bain India VC Report 2025 highlights a shift: venture funding jumped to USD 13.7 billion in 2024, a 1.4 times increase over the previous year, while deal volumes grew 45 per cent. Yet, nearly all of that growth came from small- and mid-ticket deals, with mega-rounds slowing sharply, a sign that investors are tightening standards.

In 2024, Bain & Company's India Venture Capital Report finds that CVCs stepped up meaningfully: their deal volumes increased approximately 1.8 times versus 2023, and their share of India's overall VC deal volume rose to 20 per cent, up from 16 per cent in 2023.

Insights captured from nearly 100 deeptech founders in India revealed that over 53 per cent of the founders maintain that funding in the sector remains difficult to access, while 44 per cent found it reasonably available. Only 3 per cent of the study group said that the funds were abundantly available.

According to Gupta, the AI product has notably had takers from close to 35 top companies, such as Cars24, Spinny, LendingKart, Tata AIG, other D2C brands, and also one of the top banks in India, allowing them to increase operational efficiency by using technology to engage with customers and gain insights.

Cuzor Labs announced an INR 5 Crore seed round, marking a first angel-investment from Ramesh Kannan, Founder and Managing Director of Kaynes Technology India Limited, underscoring growing confidence in India's ability to build globally competitive hardware.

The Indian IPO market is on an uptick mainly due to positive sentiment, strengthened by expectations of reform announcements ahead of Diwali, reinforcing the ongoing relief rally, with analysts highlighting that the market's gap-up opening earlier in the week signaled strong investor confidence in the uptrend.

Approved in principle earlier this June, SEBI has cleared a framework to let Cat-I/II AIFs launch a Co-Investment scheme (CIV) inside the AIF structure, instead of using a separate portfolio management service (PMS), available to accredited investors in that AIF. Each co-investment will be a separate CIV scheme with some relaxed requirements.

JSW Cement IPO allotment on August 12, listing scheduled for August 14, while NSDL Shares deliver 78 per cent IPO Returns; stock extends winning streak.

For private equity (PE) and impact firms like Leapfrog, these trends are shaping their investment strategy for the foreseeable future.

India's readiness is further underscored by its rapid rise in AI talent and multilingual NLP capabilities, enabling developers and non-developers, even in remote regions, to build applications in regional languages.