India’s New-Age Listed Players In 2025: A Year Of Bruises And Bounces |
The year 2025 offered India’s listed tech startups a chance to change their narrative of growth-at-all-costs to sustainable growth and prove their resilience.
After the euphoric IPO rush of 2021-24, the public market got used to the way tech-first startups function and the new business metrics that defined these digital-first firms better such as adjusted EBITDA margin, NOV and contribution margin.
The growth-at-all-costs narrative that once commanded sky-high valuations was brutally battered in quarterly performances in 2025 by soaring interest rates, muted consumer spending, and, most importantly, an unrelenting demand for a credible path to profitability.
What unfolded there on was a tale of two cohorts.
On one hand, the shares of Ola Electric, Swiggy, FirstCry, Honasa, and many such in-the-red companies bled, wiping out tens of thousands of crores from their market capitalisations.
And on the other, companies like Eternal, Nykaa, Paytm and Ixigo either flipped to profitability or delivered such sharp swings in unit economics that investors rewarded them with multiple expansion and share-price gains of 30-100% even as the year saw scarce movement in the broader market.
The contrast has never been starker, and it has forced the entire ecosystem of founders, investors, analysts, and regulators to confront a new reality that public markets were no longer willing to bear indefinite cash burns in the hope of distant gains.
As market volatility, cautious sentiment, and tighter institutional scrutiny set in, the market began clearly separating companies with discipline from those chasing growth without clarity on profitability timelines.
As the year comes to its sundown, Inc42 tried to take a look at the way some listed tech startups had their coffers scorched, while others weathered the heat of Dalal Street and revived.
Losses Return After Euphoric Listings
Although their IPOs scripted success stories, several listed firms entered 2025 while struggling with losses fuelled by cash burns from steeper customer acquisition costs (CAC), higher investments in dark store expansion, more subsidies to drive repeat usage, and better logistics infrastructure to reduce reliance on third-party partners.
Some of these decisions worked in favour, but the rest attracted sell-offs because of growth without any visible profitability timeline as well as market corrections.
For numerous firms, the topline growth slowed down in the face of elevated cost pressure.
Sunny Agarwal, who heads fundamental equity research at SBI Securities, said that the concerns and challenges for each of these new-age companies were unique to their respective verticals and industries. Rapid expansion and increasing competition, however, kept building pressure on their margins across 2025.
Public market investors responded predictably with rating downgrades, valuation reductions and steep price corrections.
Ola Electric, which listed in August 2024 at a peak valuation of over INR 35,000 Cr, ended 2025 with its market cap down to INR 17,000 Cr, a 50% erosion from its January 2025 high of INR 148 per share. The company’s net loss for FY25 widened more than 40% to INR 2,276 Cr, while its revenue slumped 9% to INR 4,645 Cr.
The core problem was simple – aggressive capex on gigafactories and a pivot to mass-market scooters failed to deliver the promised volumes. Subsidy cuts, charging-infrastructure delays, and a miss on its own Q2 FY26 guidance triggered a vicious cycle of downgrades and selling.
Swiggy, however, has a different tale to tell. The company’s revenue grew 35% to INR 15,227 Cr in FY25 and 54% in the first half of FY26, while consolidated losses ballooned 33%........