A busy year for initial public offerings (IPOs) in India has catapulted seven entrepreneurs onto the billionaires list, many of them early adopters in the country’s booming renewable energy sector.
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(Bloomberg) — A busy year for initial public offerings in India has catapulted seven entrepreneurs onto the dollar billionaires list, many of them early adopters in the country’s booming renewable energy sector.
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Chiranjeev Singh Saluja of Premier Energies is among those who have successfully ridden the wave.
“My father used to work in supplying hand pumps to rural villages,” the 51-year-old said in an interview. “He saw that access to electricity was minimal in those areas, so he started Premier Solar in 1995,” Saluja said.
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Three decades later, the company renamed Premier Energies is the second largest manufacturer of solar modules and integrated solar cells in the country behind the Adani Group. Investors bullish on the government’s investments in solar energy have sold Premier shares nearly threefold since its debut in September, valuing it at about $7 billion.
Saluja is one of four renewable energy entrepreneurs whose personal fortunes rose after listing their companies on stock exchanges last year.
The others are Hitech C Doshi of Waaree Group, which also makes solar modules, Bhavish Aggarwal of electric vehicle maker Ola Electric Mobility Ltd, and Manoj K Upadhyaya of solar generator Acme Solar Holdings Ltd.
Prospects for solar players look bright, with India aiming to add another 100 GW of capacity in the next four years, according to a report by Frost & Sullivan. But this may be a double-edged sword, Saluja said.
He sees an increase in new capacity in solar cell and module manufacturing over the next 18 to 24 months. “There will definitely be consolidation in this sector, so only those who expand will be able to survive,” Saluja said.
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A similar trend could happen in the Indian stock market, which was due to start in 2024, where a record 1.66 trillion rupees ($19.82 billion) was raised through IPOs compared to 650 billion rupees last year. This was contributed to by an increase in the number of unique investors on the main stock exchange by 27%, reaching 109 million.
About 85 companies aim to list on stock exchanges in 2025, targeting a combined 1.53 trillion rupees ($18 billion), according to data from Prime Database.
Meanwhile, exporters will have to brace for headwinds from a slowing economy, weak corporate earnings, a volatile rupee, tepid consumer spending and the tariff policies of incoming US President Donald Trump.
Kunal Rambia, fund manager and head of trading strategies at The Streets, a Mumbai-based long-term fund, expects rising global tensions and the threat of tariffs to trigger a deep market correction this year.
“The IPO trend will continue in the first half of 2025, but it may slow down in the second half. Startups and technology companies will find it difficult to list, especially in the second half because there may be a liquidity crunch,” he said.
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Others are more optimistic, saying that domestic inflows into stocks have been strong for a while now.
“The Indian IPO market is no longer dependent on foreign investors, as local investors and domestic institutions have enough money,” said Himanshu Kohli, co-founder of Client Associates, a multi-family office and private wealth advisor managing assets worth over $6 billion. .
“Private equity firms and family offices have moved huge amounts of money into unlisted equity and pre-IPO companies over the past year in anticipation of a successful exit in 2025,” Kohli said.
This would encourage IPO-bound companies, as financial services companies, electronics manufacturers, power generation companies and software companies are likely to dominate the pipeline. Among the big names expected to file for listing this year are online grocery company Zepto backed by Nexus Venture Partners, and e-commerce giant backed by Walmart Inc. Flipkart India Pvt, Prosus NV-owned payments company PayU and its Peak XV Partners-backed rival Pine Labs.
Reliance Industries Limited, owned by billionaire Mukesh Ambani, is expected to split its retail and telecom businesses into separate listed companies.
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Over the past three years, India’s IPO markets have been dominated by a flood of small and medium-sized companies, with 90% of them raising less than $100 million, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. While 2025 may see some big, well-known companies listing their shares, ordinary entrepreneurs across India don’t want to miss out on the IPO boom.
“The founders realized that it is better to own 75% of a publicly traded company worth $100 million than to own 100% of a company worth $10 million,” said Vishnu Agarwal, CEO of Stock Knocks, a Kolkata-based investment research firm.
“There will be a tsunami of deals next year, as founders are hungry for growth,” he said.
(Updates with background in ninth paragraph. A previous version of this story corrected the year in the tenth paragraph and spelled Donald Trump in the eleventh paragraph)
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