Tracing DPI Through India’s IPO History

What IPOs quietly reveal about India’s private market maturity

India has always made a spectacle of its IPOs. Whether it was Reliance Power’s record-breaking oversubscription in 2008 or Zomato’s buzzy public debut in 2021, a listing is often seen as a national milestone. But beneath the retail frenzy and newspaper headlines, IPOs quietly play a very different role for serious investors: they are signals of distribution, moments where private investment gains become real.

In the private markets world, there’s one metric more sobering than IRR or mark-ups. It’s DPI: Distributions to Paid-In Capital. In simpler terms : how much of what you gave to the fund as an LP has actually come back to you in cash. Not theory, not paper gains, but realised value. DPI is the true test of fund discipline and exit ability. And when you trace the history of Indian IPOs through that lens, the analysis offers insights not only into the evolution of IPOs in India but also helps understand the significance of this evolution for private market investors.

In the early 2000s, Indian public markets had their share of iconic listings – Infosys, Bharti Airtel, HDFC Bank – but these weren’t really private market exits. There was no venture ecosystem to speak of. Institutional funding was limited. Promoters took companies public, but they didn’t graduate from a pipeline of PE or VC. DPI didn’t exist as a concept because there were no LP-GP structures that needed it. Most capital stayed within families or strategic hands.

That began to shift in the mid-2010s. Flipkart’s success, the rise of Indian SaaS, and a surge of early-stage capital from Sequoia, Accel, and Nexus put the Indian venture industry on the global map. Funds raised in 2015–16 began building strong portfolios. But exits were still scarce. IPOs were rare, and M&A was the main path to liquidity. This led to a structural problem: while TVPI (Total Value to Paid-In Capital) looked good on paper, DPI lagged. LPs started asking hard questions. Everyone wanted to know – not what your companies were worth but what they were returning.

Then came 2021.

Zomato’s IPO was more than just a listing. It was the country’s first real venture-backed public market exit. For Info Edge, it was a 65x return. For Sequoia, over 12x. For Indian venture as a category, it was a validation. Suddenly, the IPO route wasn’t just theoretical. It was possible. Nykaa, Delhivery, Mamaearth, and Paytm followed. Some fared better than others, but the point wasn’t short-term performance. It was exit visibility.

An Avendus Capital report in 2022 confirmed that over 70% of top-performing IPOs in recent years were PE/VC-backed. These listings didn’t just signal a healthy retail appetite. They quietly powered DPI across India’s leading funds. GPs that had spent years building patient capital strategies were finally returning money to LPs, not promises.

According to EY, PE-backed IPOs in India jumped to 30 in 2023, up from 18 in 2022. That’s more than just a stat, it’s a structural change. Because every time a company goes public, it expands the list of credible private-to-public case studies. And every time capital is returned, LP confidence compounds. DPI builds track record, and track record builds future fundraises.

But what happens next?

As of 2025, the IPO queue includes FirstCry, Ola Electric, Swiggy, and several mid-size SaaS plays. The market, however, is more cautious. Global sentiment is cooling. Exit windows are tighter. This is where the best GPs stand apart. They don’t rely on IPOs alone. They build multi-path liquidity strategies using secondaries, M&A, structured exits, and dividend recaps to return capital. The IPO remains a powerful option but is no longer the only one.

Still, when an IPO happens, it moves everything. It uplifts mark-ups across comparable private holdings. It validates sectors. It sets benchmarks. For investors watching from the outside, it often feels like the beginning of a company’s journey. But for the smart money – the LPs, the early GPs, the family offices that got in at Seed or Series B—it’s the culmination of a long, patient arc.

Sources:

• Jay Ritter, IPO Data and Performance, University of Florida: https://site.warrington.ufl.edu/ritter/
• PitchBook, 2023 Global VC-Backed IPO Report: https://pitchbook.com/news/reports
• EY, PE/VC Agenda – India Trend Book 2024: EY India PE/VC Trend Book
• Avendus Capital, India IPO & PE-backed Listing Trends, 2022
• YourStory, Zomato’s IPO: Info Edge, Sequoia, Tiger Returns: https://yourstory.com/2021/07/early-backers-info-edge-sequoia-to-make-big-return
• YReuters, India’s Biggest IPOs and Market Impact: https://www.reuters.com/markets/

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