Vijay Shekhar Sharma, founder and CEO of Paytm, said the opportunity to obtain capital, whether public or private, can define a company’s long-term strengths.
“Thinking that public listing is a moat or private is a moat, I think that in the long run, all companies can see it, and I think all companies are absolutely moats,” said Mahakumbh, a startup in New Delhi.
“But if you don’t need capital…then the list doesn’t matter. At the end of the day, investors are doing capital there. It’s important to get capital and the scale of capital. For example, Flipkart is able to raise billions of dollars in a private market, and even the public market is not private. Then, what needs to be, this approach is anything.
To be sure, Paytm proposed ₹Of the public listings in November 2021, there were 183 billion rupees – the largest in India at the time. Despite the size of the IPO, Paytm’s stock faces sharp corrections in the coming months, with nearly 70% of its value coming from the issue price.
On the other hand, Sachin Bansal, who co-founded Flipkart, said that the public market is the best source of capital.
He added that he plans to list Navi, a financial services business he founded after he withdraws from Flipkart in this financial position.
“Now, we’re in a place where we can use more capital, and I think the public market is the best source of capital, and that’s what I believe if you can handle salary… or something that comes with it.”
This is not Navi’s first shot in public. In September 2022, the company received a green light from the Securities and Exchange Commission of India (SEBI) ₹335 billion IPOs, but decided to put the plan aside, reportedly waiting for a more favorable market environment.
However, the broader fintech industry continues to face growing regulatory scrutiny (from digital lending guidelines to data localization rules), causing founders to rethink their scale strategies and timelines.
“In fintech, regulators become extremely important stakeholders – you have to consider every day. In fact, to some extent, sometimes, they may become the most important stakeholders in the equation, which is sometimes customers, e-commerce, etc, and so on.”
“So, I think if the regulations are changing very quickly (what happened with all the regulators over the last few years), something new will come on you very, very quickly and you have to deal with it constantly. It’s like punching a hole in a boxing circle and you pick it up, collect yourself and keep moving forward.
Alok Bansal, co-founder and executive vice chairman of PB Fintech and Policy Bazaar, added that regulators are equal at the table. “Regulators and governments are basically another CXO on the table.”
