Indian founders make hay with IPOs amid rally, but investors suffer

BENGALURU -- Indian entrepreneurs are making windfalls in initial public offerings, but about one-fourth of the companies that hit the bourses amid a rally beginning in 2021 have tanked, raising questions about whether the bull market triggered overpriced IPOs.

Between 2021 and 2023, entrepreneurs -- called "promoters" in local parlance -- sold shares worth 814.24 billion rupees ($9.8 billion) in IPOs on India's two main exchanges, the Bombay Stock Exchange and the National Stock Exchange. This was 2.4 times more than the IPOs between 2018 and 2020, according to the public market data provider Prime Database.