It’s been billed as India’s first AI IPO. Fractal, a veteran in the Indian tech landscape, is all set for its public listing.

Over the last 18 months, the Indian ecosystem has seen dozens of new-age tech IPOs — some very successful, some a little muted. But a majority of these were consumer-facing tech companies.

Over in the West, AI is the single biggest attraction for public market investors, so naturally, there’s a great deal of buzz around an Indian AI company entering the fray.

Fractal Analytics, is looking to raise close to INR 5,000 Cr from the market through a mix of a fresh issue of up to INR 1,279.3 Cr and an offer-for-sale (OFS) component of up to INR 3,620.7 Cr. This makes it one of the biggest enterprise tech listings from India’s SaaS and AI sector.

Along with Fractal, another SaaS startup, Amagi Media Labs, which provides a full-stack SaaS platform for broadcasters, streaming platforms, and content owners to create, manage, distribute, and monetise video content globally, has also received SEBI’s nod for a public listing.

This comes close on the heels of SaaS major Capillary Technologies, which made its debut on the exchanges in late November. Although it was a muted debut, the company’s shares got listed at INR 560 apiece on the BSE, a discount of 2.9% to the issue price.

Earlier in November, Pune-based powertrain controls and automotive components maker Sedemac Mechatronics also filed draft documents with SEBI for IPO.

These developments mark a major moment for India’s deeptech ecosystem. After a 20–25 year journey of deep research, product development, and slow but sustainable growth, many of India’s deeptech companies are finally waking up to the public market opportunity.

Although investors may not see Fractal as a pure-play deeptech IPO, the fact that others such as IdeaForge and Ather have already gone public shows that the AI and deeptech segment is steadily gaining momentum when it comes to such exits.

But like we mentioned above, AI mania — or what many call a bubble — has gripped markets abroad. Is India about to follow suit?

Why Fractal’s IPO Feels Different From The Rest

Founded 25 years ago, Fractal genrated profit in FY25, and this wasn’t a small turnaround. The company reported a consolidated net profit of INR 220.6 Cr, compared to a loss of INR 54.7 Cr in FY24.

Revenue grew to INR 2,765.4 Cr in FY25 from INR 2,196.3 Cr the previous year, while EBITDA margin rose to 17.4% in FY25 from 10.6% in FY24 — a huge 68% boost.

The fundamentals are robust, but according to market analysts, Fractal stands out for a different reason.

Until now, India’s public markets have been missing one important piece of the tech puzzle, a truly AI-native company. Despite all the talk around artificial intelligence and its growing presence across industries, no company built primarily on AI has made it to the Indian stock exchanges.

Traditional IT services firms may use AI in their offerings, but they remain services-led businesses. Fractal, on the other hand, is........

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