Outlook 2026: India’s oldest, youngest, biggest unicorns likely to go public

For nearly three years now, India’s startup ecosystem—once celebrated as the world’s third-largest startup and unicorn market—has faced a series of uncomfortable reckonings. 

First came questions around whether consumer internet companies had overestimated market size. Then followed a wave of governance and compliance lapses that saw some of the country’s biggest names unravel. More recently, criticism has shifted to what India failed to build: meaningful breakthroughs in AI and deeptech, even as global capital chased both.

Unsurprisingly, capital has remained tight. Large global investors, such as SoftBank and Tiger Global, who once fuelled the funding frenzy, have largely stayed on the sidelines, despite reiterating their long-term commitments to India. 

At closed-door investor gatherings, a familiar question keeps surfacing: ‘Where are the large, scalable companies worth backing today?’ 

This is playing out even as several early-stage funds have raised sizable pools of capital, only to struggle to find companies that meet their bar.

Yet, there is one area where investors have had little reason to complain: exits. Since Zomato (now Eternal) reset expectations with its IPO in mid-2021, India has steadily built a pipeline of startup listings. 

Most have held up well in public markets, delivering meaningful returns to early backers. In 2025 alone, six large startups went public—minting founder-billionaires and handing windfall gains to venture funds, as YourStory reported earlier.

That momentum now sets the stage for what’s next. With several companies already laying the groundwork for public listings, 2026 is shaping up to be another busy year for startup IPOs. 

Notably, two of India’s oldest unicorns—Flipkart and InMobi—are finally expected to move towards the bourses. Then, there is Zepto: one of the most talked-about startups of the past five years, the rare company to raise large rounds through 2024 and 2025, and now, in the last leg of planning a public listing. 

While bankers suggest that startups will avoid listing in the last quarter of FY26 (January-March) and opt for listing from April onwards, most of these companies have already begun preparations, with PhonePe having already filed its draft papers using SEBI’s confidential route.

PhonePe

The market leader in UPI payments formally entered the IPO pipeline in September 2025 by filing draft papers for a Rs 12,000 crore public issue through the Securities and Exchange Board of India’s confidential pre-filing route. 

The move allows companies to engage privately with the regulator, fine-tune disclosures, and retain flexibility on the IPO timing—an approach that has increasingly become the preferred route for large startups testing public-market readiness.

India’s most-valued fintech unicorn last raised capital in 2023 at a $12 billion valuation, and is now reportedly targeting a valuation in the $12–15 billion range. Last year, The CapTable had examined why Walmart—PhonePe’s majority owner—has been keen to push the fintech toward a listing.

Operationally, PhonePe has shown steady progress. In FY25, the company reported a 40% jump in operating revenue to Rs 7,115 crore, alongside a more than five-fold increase in adjusted profit after tax, excluding ESOP costs. Including ESOP expenses, its net loss narrowed 13% year-on-year to Rs 1,727 crore, from nearly Rs 2,000 crore in FY24.

Payments remain the core of PhonePe’s business. Transaction processing, platform usage, subscriptions, and advertising together accounted for 88.5% of operating revenue, with the remainder coming from insurance, stock broking, mutual fund distribution, and RBI incentives. 

Importantly, the contribution of payments fell from 95% in FY24, signalling a deliberate push to diversify revenues—mirroring a broader shift across India’s fintech sector, as The CapTable has previously reported.

With scale, improving financials, and a clearer diversification story, PhonePe is shaping up to be one of the most closely watched fintech listings in the coming cycle.

Flipkart

Few startups are as closely watched as Flipkart. Founded nearly two decades ago, Flipkart has long been India’s largest ecommerce player, having overtaken Amazon in the country. Acquired by Walmart in 2018 in India’s biggest-ever deal involving a new-age company, it is now widely expected to make its public market debut in 2026.

Last month, the company completed its long-planned reverse flip to India, merging its Singapore and US entities into a single Indian company—a critical step signalling serious preparation for a domestic listing.

Walmart, which holds a majority stake, has explored an IPO for Flipkart since 2021, but held back amid volatile global markets. Valued at over $30 billion, Flipkart will become India’s largest-ever startup IPO—both in terms of valuation and likely issue size—and among the most valuable companies to list on Indian exchanges.

Financially, the scale is undeniable. In FY25, Flipkart reported a 17% rise in operating revenue to Rs 82,787 crore (nearly $10 billion). Losses, however, widened to Rs 5,189 crore as costs rose in tandem, with total expenses touching Rs 87,737 crore. Much of the spending lately has been driven by its aggressive push into quick commerce through Flipkart Minutes.

The timing of Flipkart’s potential listing adds another layer of scrutiny. In December 2025, Meesho—one of Flipkart’s youngest rivals—successfully listed, becoming the first large, multi-category ecommerce company to debut on Indian exchanges. Meesho also reported sharper operational efficiency, cutting its FY25 net loss (excluding one-time tax costs) to just over Rs 108 crore.

With Meesho now publicly traded, investors will have a clear benchmark to evaluate Flipkart’s numbers—raising the stakes for what is already set to be one of India’s most closely watched IPOs.

Zepto

If Flipkart has been India’s most storied startup for nearly two decades, Zepto has arguably been its most discussed over the past five years. Founded in 2020 by two teenage entrepreneurs, Zepto burst onto the scene by promising grocery deliveries in just 10 minutes—quickly becoming a defining name in India’s fast-growing quick commerce segment.

Since then, the company has emerged as one of India’s most heavily funded startups, amassing a large war chest to take on entrenched rivals such as Eternal’s Blinkit, Tata-owned BigBasket, and Swiggy’s Instamart. 

That capital has helped the company scale rapidly and cement its position as one of the largest players in the category. Even so, Zepto has yet to claim clear leadership, remaining locked in a close contest with Instamart for the second spot.

The pace of growth, however, has been striking. According to media reports, Zepto reported revenue of over Rs 9,600 crore in FY25—up nearly 130% year-on-year. The company, however, also reported a wider net loss of Rs 3,367 crore. In FY24, the company had reported a loss of Rs 1,214 crore.

In early December, Zepto converted from a private limited company to a public limited entity, and just last week, the company confidentially filed draft papers with India's market regulator. In October 2025, the company raised $450 million at a $7 billion valuation and is widely expected to target a public debut at a similar level, according to industry watchers.

At the same time, Zepto’s rise has not been without scrutiny. The company has faced criticism over alleged dark patterns, misleading disclosures on its app, and questions around advertising practices. In June, The CapTable reported on growing friction between Zepto and several D2C brands on its platform—issues that will now sit squarely under the public market’s lens as the company edges closer to an IPO.

PayU India

PayU India, the Prosus-backed payments and fintech firm, has been quietly repositioning itself for a public market debut after several years of IPO speculation. The company’s IPO have become one of the most anticipated in India’s fintech landscape.

Over the past decade, PayU has expanded from a core gateway business into credit and lending through its LazyPay unit. At one point, it was also poised to acquire BillDesk in a landmark $4.7 billion deal that would have reshaped the Indian payments segment, but that transaction ultimately did not materialise. 

In FY25, PayU India’s operating revenue rose 22.8% to Rs 5,563 crore, with total revenue, including other income, coming in at around Rs 5,596.5 crore. 

Growth was driven by both its payment gateway commission, which climbed to Rs 3,868.2 crore, and a rapid expansion in interest income from its credit business, which surged more than 90% to over Rs 1,042 crore. 

Meanwhile, PayU narrowed its consolidated net loss by 42% to Rs 248 crore in FY25, compared with a loss of Rs 429.7 crore in FY24. 

After years of waiting and strategic recalibration, PayU India—one of the nation’s largest payments firms—is now seen as a strong candidate for a 2026 listing. 

Razorpay

Razorpay, India’s second-most valuable fintech, has spent the past few years preparing for a public market debut. Founded in 2014 by Harshil Mathur and Shashank Kumar, Razorpay is behind most digital payments in India. However, it is now trying to convince investors that it can scale meaningfully beyond payments as margins compress across the industry. 

That transition is beginning to reflect in its financials. In FY25, Razorpay’s consolidated revenue surged 65% to Rs 3,783 crore, while gross profit crossed Rs 1,200 crore, underscoring the scale of its core engine. 

However, the company reported a net loss of Rs 1,209 crore during the year, largely driven by one-time costs linked to its long-awaited reverse flip to India, including ESOP and tax-related expenses. Operationally, management has maintained that the core payments business remains profitable.

Payments continue to account for nearly 80–85% of Razorpay’s revenue, even as the company aggressively built adjacent businesses, including business banking through RazorpayX, payroll, corporate cards, merchant lending, and offline POS following its Ezetap acquisition and a consumer-facing UPI app, Pop. 

The strategy is clear: deepen monetisation within its merchant base and lift ARPU, rather than chase scale alone.

While RazorpayX has seen volume growth—processing millions of payslips monthly—the bulk of revenue continues to flow from payment aggregation, a segment facing intense competition and margin pressure. With MDRs under strain and UPI offering near-zero economics, diversification has shifted from optional to essential.

The company, last valued at $7.5 billion during the 2021–22 funding cycle, is widely expected to test public markets over the next 12–18 months. Having completed its reverse flip, Razorpay now faces its most critical test yet: proving that its expanding fintech stack can translate into durable, diversified growth—rather than remain a collection of promising, but peripheral, bets. The company’s valuation, however, is expected to be much lower than its last private market price.