India ‘very favorable’ for IPOs, Peak XV says, as economy and investor sentiment stay strong
Shailendra Singh, managing director of Peak XV Partners.
Lionel Ng | Bloomberg | Getty Images
India offers a “very favorable” environment for companies to launch initial public offerings, said Shailendra Singh, managing director at Peak XV Partners, formerly Sequoia Capital India & Southeast Asia.
“My general view is, especially in Indian public markets, the regulatory framework, what Securities and Exchange Board of India does, what Reserve Bank of India does, what other regulators do is actually really good,” Singh told CNBC.
Singh, who has been at the VC firm for 18 years and led it since 2011, said India has created “a very favorable environment” for companies to list there. “It’s both safe and dynamic in India for a young company to be able to go public.”
There were 220 IPOs in India last year, up 48% from 2022, making it the second-largest IPO market in the world, according to an EY report. Though Mainland China took the top spot, the number of IPOs there slid 29% to 302.
The Indian IPO market is set to remain strong in 2024, buoyed by optimistic investor sentiment, a robust economy, and expectations of lower inflation and rate cuts, EY said.
“The Indian capital markets have evolved quite a bit. The markets have deepened in terms of liquidity. There’s lots of interest in tech companies coming up because … we are beginning to see a large number of companies with triple-digit million revenues and profits,” Singh said.
India is emerging as a bright spot amid global macroeconomic uncertainty, mainly driven by optimism over the country’s resilient economic fundamentals, KPMG said last month in its report “IPOs in India.”
On why some Indian firms prefer to list locally, Singh said: “Founders are realizing that the U.S. markets may not always understand Indian companies.”
As many as 20 companies including Zomato and Mamaearth in Peak XV’s portfolio have listed via IPOs, the firm said. Peak XV Partners, one of Asia’s largest tech investors, manages $9 billion in assets.
In June, Sequoia divided its global partnership into three independent units, namely Sequoia Capital in the U.S. and Europe, Peak XV Partners in India and Southeast Asia and HongShan in China.
The venture capital firm has invested in more than 400 companies across the technology, software, financial services and consumer sectors including India’s fintech firm Pine Labs, Indonesian coffee chain Kopi Kenangan, Singapore-based online marketplace Carousell and edtech companies Byju’s and Unacademy.
Favorite sectors in India
India has multiple “pretty exciting” investment areas, Singh said, naming cross-border software, fintech and consumer as the firm’s biggest sectors for investments.
Cross-border software is a key area Peak XV is betting on, given the potential of software companies being built in India for the whole world, he said.
“Our second-[biggest] sector tends to be fintech. We are a very strong fintech investor. I think India is one of the world’s most fertile markets because of Aadhaar, UPI and the India stack.”
In the consumer-centric sector, he listed consumer brands, ed-tech and healthcare as the the firm’s focus for investments.
“We will see plenty of good education companies being built in the long-term,” Singh said, given that consumers in places like India and China understand that the path to upward social mobility is through education.
There are also emerging areas such as deep tech and semiconductors, which are interesting though it’s still early days, he said. “We are [just] starting to make bets.”
Technology
Waymo will update driverless fleet after San Francisco blackout to improve navigation during outages
A Waymo car is halted on the road amid a power outage in San Francisco, California, U.S., December 20, 2025, in this screengrab obtained from a social media video.d
Reuters
Three days after a blackout in San Francisco caused Waymo to pause its driverless car service, the Alphabet-owned company said it’s updating its fleet so its vehicles are better prepared to respond during future outages.
“We’ve always focused on developing the Waymo Driver for the world as it is, including when infrastructure fails,” the company said in a blog post late Tuesday.
Power outages began early afternoon on Saturday in San Francisco and peaked roughly two hours later, affecting about 130,000 customers, according to Pacific Gas and Electric. As of Sunday morning, about 21,000 customers remained without power. PG&E said a fire at a substation resulted in “significant and extensive” damage.
With stoplights and traffic signals not functioning, the city was hit with widespread gridlock. Videos shared on social media appeared to show multiple Waymo vehicles stalled in traffic in various neighborhoods.
“We directed our fleet to pull over and park appropriately so we could return vehicles to our depots in waves,” Waymo said in Tuesday’s blog post. “This ensured we did not further add to the congestion or obstruct emergency vehicles during the peak of the recovery effort.”
San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie said in an update on X Saturday evening that police officers, fire crews, parking control officers and city ambassadors were deployed across affected neighborhoods.
Waymo said that it’s analyzing the event, and is taking three “immediate steps.”
The first involves “fleet-wide updates” to give vehicles “more context about regional outages,” so cars can take more decisive actions at intersections. The company said it’s also improving its “emergency response protocols,” and is coordinating with Mayor Lurie’s team in San Francisco to better collaborate in emergency preparedness. Finally, Waymo said it’s updating its first responder training “as we discover learnings from this and other widespread events.”
In addition to the Bay Area, Waymo currently serves paid rides to the public in and around Austin, Texas, Phoenix, Atlanta and Los Angeles. The company recently crossed an estimated 450,000 weekly paid rides, and said in December it had served 14 million trips in 2025, putting it on pace to end the year at more than 20 million trips total since launching in 2020.
“Backed by 100M+ miles of fully autonomous driving experience and a record of improving road safety, we are undaunted by the opportunity to challenge the status quo of our roads, and we’re proud to continue serving San Franciscan residents and visitors,” the company said in Tuesday’s blog.
— CNBC’s Lora Kolodny and Jennifer Elias contributed to this report.
WATCH: Waymo service resumes after errors cause issues in San Francisco
Direxion signage at the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York, US, on Monday, Dec. 22, 2025. The holiday-shortened week started with gains in stocks amid a broad advance that saw a continuation of the bullish momentum on Wall Street.
Michael Nagle | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Motive, a company with software for managing corporate trucks and drivers, on Tuesday filed for an initial public offering on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol “MTVE.”
The paperwork puts Motive among a fast-growing group of tech companies looking to go public in 2026. Anthropic, OpenAI and SpaceX have all reportedly considered making their shares widely available for trading next year.
Motive is smaller, reporting a $62.7 million net loss on $115.8 million in revenue in the third quarter. The loss widened from $41.3 million in the same quarter of 2024, while revenue grew about 23% year over year. The company had almost 100,000 clients at the end of September.
Ryan Johns, Obaid Khan and Shoaib Makani started Motive in 2013, originally under the name Keep Truckin. Makani, the CEO, is Khan’s brother-in-law.
Investors include Alphabet’s GV, Base10 Partners, Greenoaks, Index Ventures, Kleiner Perkins and Scale Venture Partners.
Motive’s AI Dashcam device for detecting unsafe driving “has prevented 170,000 collisions and saved 1,500 lives on our roads,” Makani wrote in a letter to investors. Most revenue comes from subscriptions, although Motive does sell replacement hardware and professional services.
The San Francisco company changed its name to Motive in 2022, and as of Sept. 30, it employed 4,508 people. Motive employs 400 full-time data annotators who apply labels that are meant to enhance artificial intelligence models.
Motive has ongoing patent-infringement litigation with competitor Samsara, which went public in 2021 and today has a $22 billion market capitalization.
WATCH: AI IPO boom next year? The changing 2026 IPO landscape
Technology
Why an analyst sees Meta shares getting back to record highs – plus, another tariff reprieve
-
Sports2 years agoStory injured on diving stop, exits Red Sox game
-
Sports3 years ago‘Storybook stuff’: Inside the night Bryce Harper sent the Phillies to the World Series
-
Sports2 years agoGame 1 of WS least-watched in recorded history
-
Sports3 years agoButton battles heat exhaustion in NASCAR debut
-
Sports3 years agoMLB Rank 2023: Ranking baseball’s top 100 players
-
Sports4 years ago
Team Europe easily wins 4th straight Laver Cup
-
Environment3 years agoJapan and South Korea have a lot at stake in a free and open South China Sea
-
Environment1 year agoHere are the best electric bikes you can buy at every price level in October 2024