The Indian IPO market has delivered a landmark year in 2025, rewriting records in the country’s primary market. As of December 15, 355 companies in total, consisting of 101 mainboard companies and 254 small and medium enterprises (SMEs), went public and raised an enormous amount of ₹1.85 lakh crore.
This amount exceeds the 2024 mobilization of ₹1.6 lakh crore by around ₹24,000 crore, highlighting the incredible speed of this year’s capital-raising efforts. Just the big corporations contributed ₹1.74 lakh crore of the overall funds raised. According to Pranav Haldia, Managing Director of Prime Database Group, 2025 stands out as the most significant year in the history of India’s primary market.
Primary Market Defies Volatility
While equity markets faced bouts of sharp volatility during the year, the IPO segment continued to gather momentum. The great milestone of 100 mainboard IPOs was reached which was interpreted by market watchers as a very deep change in the capital markets of India.
Notwithstanding the uncertainties concerning the global economy, the demand from investors did not diminish. Among the issuers for this year were some of the most prominent names such as Tata Capital, LG Electronics India, HDB Financial Services, ICICI Prudential AMC, Lenskart Solutions, Grow, NSDL, Pine Labs, Meesho, PhysicsWallah, and Canara HSBC Life Insurance.
Key Lessons for Investors
The robust IPO activity also offered important lessons. Nearly 29 issues showed that heavy retail subscription does not always translate into strong listing gains. IPOs such as JSW Cement, Dr Agarwal Healthcare, Ather Energy, WeWork India, Orcla India and Fujiyama Power Systems struggled post-listing, leaving investors disappointed.
Market analysts point out that aggressive pricing by merchant bankers, often in coordination with promoters, played a major role in the weak post-listing performance of some stocks.
Promoters, PE Firms Gain the Most
The year 2025 saw the IPO boom bring big profits to promoters and private equity investors. Of the total amount raised through IPOs that have occurred so far, over 60% has been obtained by way of Offer for Sale (OFS), which gives the chance for shareholders to sell their shares at high prices.
Moreover, companies had already tried to create interest in their forthcoming issues by quoting very high prices in the grey market, thus attracting more and more investors.
To sum up, 2025 will be acknowledged as a year of unprecedented IPOs but experts suggest investors to be careful and to rely on valuation and fundamentals for a better investment decision instead of just looking at the number of subscriptions.
