New-age cos downsize IPOs; Neysa’s $1.2 billion funding
Also in the letter:
■ Qcomm on V-Day rush
■ Ashwini Vaishnaw on India’s data play
■ AI impact on IT services
Why new-age IPOs are seeing shrinking issue sizes, slashed valuations
Several new-age companies that have gone public in recent months have trimmed issue sizes and settled for lower valuations as choppy markets and shifting investor filters reset IPO benchmarks.
Tell me more: Adtech firm Amagi Media Labs, logistics platform Shadowfax, analytics company Fractal Analytics, customer engagement firm Capillary Technologies, and payments major Pine Labs are among those that tweaked issue size or pricing at debut.
Conservative lens: Bankers and investors say public market participants are taking a more cautious stance, sharpening focus on profitability, operating leverage and cash flow visibility.
Pricing playbook: Weaker market conditions and heightened institutional selectivity are pushing issuers to price conservatively to secure demand and support post-listing stability.
Ripple effect: Recent listings are becoming valuation benchmarks for future deals. Late-stage investors expect greater scrutiny of cash flows, margins, and competitive positioning in upcoming large IPOs such as PhonePe, Zepto, Oyo, and Infra.Market.
Also Read: Domestic MFs double their holdings in new-age startups over a year
Blackstone leads $600 million raise in AI cloud startup Neysa at $1.4 billion valuation
Neysa CEO Sharad Sanghi
Blackstone is leading a $1.2 billion investment in Neysa, marking what would be India’s largest-ever AI funding round.
Deal structure:
- The round is split evenly between primary equity and debt, giving Blackstone a majority stake.
- Existing investors, including Nexus Venture Partners, Z47 and Blume Ventures, are participating alongside new backers.
- The transaction assigns an enterprise valuation of $1.4 billion to Neysa, including debt.
Why it matters:
- Founded by Netmagic’s Sharad Sanghi, Neysa operates in the GPU-led AI cloud segment, offering enterprises compute power to deploy large-scale AI workloads.
- The fresh capital will help it deploy over 20,000 GPUs and deepen global partnerships.
India play: Sanghi expects India to be Neysa’s biggest market, and it aims to leverage Blackstone’s relationships with frontier AI companies like OpenAI and Anthropic to add to its client base as these firms make their India forays.
Big picture: With India currently housing about 60,000 GPUs, Blackstone is betting on exponential growth in AI infrastructure demand.
Quick commerce gains as last-minute events drive Valentine’s demand
Direct-to-consumer (D2C) brands report a surge in sales during the Valentine’s Day period as smaller events, festivals, and occasions grow bigger on quick commerce each year.
Valentine’s Day is emerging as a key sales event for quick commerce platforms, as companies like Zepto, Blinkit, Flipkart Minutes, and Swiggy’s Instamart create dedicated sections on their apps featuring brand deals, offers, and promotions days before February 14.
By the numbers:
- Flipkart Minutes clocked a 7x year-on-year (YoY) increase in sales during Valentine’s week.
- Swiggy Instamart registered 10x growth in orders for jewellery, greeting cards, and plush toys during Valentine’s week.
Gifting gains:
- Amazon India saw a strong uptick across categories such as chocolates, fresh flowers, fragrances, jewellery, beauty, fashion, electronics, and gift cards.
- Floweraura recorded 32% YoY growth on February 13 and 14.
- Mymuse saw 60% YoY growth in quick commerce during this period.
- For Palmonas, the majority of orders came from the Rs 1,000–Rs 1,400 range, as customers sought premium yet affordable gifting options.
Sales calendar gets bigger: Quick commerce platforms are increasingly curating event-focused sales to drive occasion-led shopping. Take the India vs Pakistan T20 World Cup match. Zepto has a ‘Match Ready’ segment, and Instamart has a ‘Game On’ zone, where they have curated snacks like popcorn and chips, beverages like soft drinks and juices, and jerseys.
For Valentine’s week, the key categories in demand were flowers, chocolates and gift packs across quick commerce platforms.
Also Read: Gifting, wellness brands find love on qcomm this Valentine’s week
India a trusted ally in chip & electronics chain: Ashwini Vaishnaw
Union minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said that India has emerged as a “trusted partner” in the global electronics ecosystem, predicting that electronics will soon rank among the country’s top two exports.
India first: Speaking at the ET Now Global Business Summit on Saturday, Vaishnaw highlighted that during FTA negotiations, both the EU and US specifically sought Indian-made components and modules to move away from concentrated global supply chains.
Verbatim: “Now there are a series of components where more than 50% of our demand is going to be met out of India within the coming two years. And there are so many components where we will become the global suppliers to the world, including our neighbours,” he said.
AI summit this week: India will host the India AI Summit in New Delhi from today, which Vaishnaw said is the largest AI Summit ever held in the world, with more than 20 heads of government and 100-plus global leaders confirmed to participate.
“The summit’s focus will be on the impact of AI,” he explained. “AI is basically bringing the fifth industrial revolution. This is going to be much bigger than the past industrial revolutions, and the pace of transformation is also going to be very fast.”
Also Read: Data centres to be massive job creator: PM Modi
Other Top Stories By Our Reporters
Rajesh Nambiar
Nasscom prez on AI impact on IT: While AI advancements are unprecedented and represent a new generation of productivity in software development, concerns that these tools will disrupt or eliminate technology services are “strongly wrong”, said Rajesh Nambiar, president of industry body Nasscom.
Ixigo acquires 60% stake in Trenes: Le Travenues Technology, the parent company of online travel aggregator Ixigo, has acquired a 60% majority stake in Spain-based online train ticketing platform Trenes for €12 million (around Rs 125 crore).
Digital arrest victims may be going under cover: Banks and insurers are in early talks to design an insurance product that could cover victims of digital arrest scams. If implemented, India would become the first country with fraud coverage for such cyber scams.
Global Picks We Are Reading
■ Google’s AI Overviews can scam you. Here’s how to stay safe (Wired)
■ What kind of AI disruption victim are you? (FT)
■ OpenAI accuses DeepSeek of “free-riding” on American R&D (Rest of World)
