The IPO wave of 2025 is here, and it's bigger than ever. From fintech unicorns to financial powerhouses and infrastructure giants, some of India's biggest names are all set to make their stock market debut. PhonePe, Zepto, Tata Capital, NSE, NSDL, and JSW Cement are just a few of the highly awaited listings that have investors and analysts buzzing with excitement.
rediffGURU Dr Ganesh Natarajan tells you how to upskill and upgrade yourself in order to future-proof your career.
The era where nations thrived through rigid alignments is giving way to an age where the connective State defines power. For India, that era has arrived, points out Dr Nishakant Ojha.
Several executives argue that UPI has the potential to grow tenfold, but warn that the absence of a monetisation model risks stagnating the real-time payments system, which has been recording all-time-high transaction volumes every year.
Fintech companies believe that the impact of Reserve Bank of India's order last week on unsecured loans will be visible in six to 12 months and prompt them to diversify and strengthen their secured portfolio. Fintechs which source funds through banks or non-banking finance companies (NBFCs) are looking at quickly building their secured portfolio options to at least 40 per cent of their total portfolio. "Over the medium to long term, as part of our product strategy, we are evaluating secured products which can be enabled over a digital platform" said Yogi Sadana, the founder of Zype, a lending-focussed fintech.
They don't just want better returns -- they're looking for global opportunities, more variety and smarter ways to grow their money, says Soubho Moulik, CEO, Appreciate.
Life Insurance Corporation (LIC) , the country's largest domestic institutional investor (DII), has seen a Rs 46,000 crore erosion in the value of its equity holdings amid market downturns in July. The benchmark indices, Nifty 50 and BSE Sensex, have slipped 2.6 per cent from their June 2025-end level to 24,837 and 81,463.09 respectively.
Recently, Slice, a payment app, acquired a 5 per cent stake in North East Small Finance (NESF) for $3.42 million - the first such deal by a fintech in a small finance bank. Slice (valued at $1.5 billion, and backed by Tiger Global, Blume Ventures and Axis Bank) will technically get a toehold in a scheduled commercial bank if NESF were to get a licence to morph into one down the line Such a transition is well within the banking regulator's declared framework. The transaction has to be seen in a larger context.
Investors should be mindful of the high volatility in cryptos: Bitcoin has fallen more than 80 per cent in past corrections.
Fintech firm One97 Communications, which owns the Paytm brand, reported its first-ever consolidated net profit at Rs 122.5 crore in the quarter ended June 2025, mainly on account of cost optimisation and an increase in payment revenue. Paytm had posted a net loss of Rs 840 crore in the year-ago period.
Candidates who are selected for the MPOWER Women in STEM Scholarship 2025 will receive up to $5,000.
DPDP Act (2023) gives individuals the right to decide how their personal data is collected and used. For many businesses, this means reworking longstanding data practices, notes Ravi Duvvuru.
Currently there are 26 licensed players in the P2P lending sector but only 10-11 are actively operating.
rediffGURU Nayagam PP, career counsellor and the founder of EduJob360, counsels students and aspiring professionals about how they can make the right career decision.
As fintech major Pine Labs gears up for its initial public offering (IPO), its Draft Red Herring Prospectus has highlighted its top executives' pay and stock options, including those of Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Amrish Rau. Rau's net worth is estimated at Rs 850 crore-1,000 crore following the IPO.
'Listing of scaled Indian subsidiaries of multinational corporations as well as of Indian conglomerates continues to remain a key theme for IPOs in India.'
Asset quality within the non-banking financial sector (NBFCs) deteriorated with the share of stressed assets rising to 5.9 per cent in March 2025 from 3.9 per cent in September 2024, according to the Reserve Bank of India's Financial Stability Report (FSR). Slippage ratios among upper layer NBFCs have been rising, along with an upward trend in loan write-offs.
In today's dynamic economic landscape, commerce and management education is crucial for a global career, says Nayagam PP.
Anmol Singh Jaggi and Puneet Singh Jaggi, once hailed as rising stars in India's clean energy sector, are now facing serious regulatory action.
Promoters of India's top private listed companies have cut their stakes sharply since 2021, taking advantage of elevated valuations and reshaping ownership dynamics in the market. Holdings of promoters in the top 200 privately owned listed firms declined nearly 600 basis points (bps) to 37 per cent at the end of FY25, from 43 per cent in FY21.
Hiring demand is strongest for high-impact technology and product roles, particularly DevOps engineers, product managers, and full-stack developers.
'The brand, the team, and the people have to make the transition from playing league matches to Test matches.'
In January, Visa's chief executive officer, Al Kelly, said during an earnings call that "there's been a burst of the balloon in valuations in the fintech world". Noting that the trend of lower valuations "is a helpful characteristic of the current environment", he added: "We will look for capabilities and management teams that will bring more value to Visa than we can bring ourselves." Data from KPMG's Pulse of Fintech H2'22 shows that global fintech investment - via mergers and acquisitions (M&As), private equity (PE) and venture capital (VC) firms - at $164.1 billion in 2022, was down 31 per cent over the year before. Indian fintechs held up better during this timeframe, attracting $6 billion, or a fall of 24 per cent.
A multibagger stock multiplies its original investment several times, delivering returns of 100%, 200%, or even higher. The excitement of finding such wealth creators is undeniable, but the process of identifying them is far from simple. It requires a careful blend of research, patience, and the right set of tools.
There is a need for real-time or near real-time credit reporting, instead of the current fortnightly system, to improve underwriting precision, enable timely reflection of borrower actions such as loan closures or repayments, and deliver a superior consumer experience, Deputy Governor of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), M Rajeshwar Rao said on Wednesday.
Billionaire industrialist Mukesh Ambani described his 2016 return to the telecom industry with Reliance Jio as the "biggest risk" of his life, saying that even if analysts' predictions of financial failure had come true, it would still have been worth it for the role it played in transforming India digitally.
Generative artificial intelligence (AI), climate tech and fintech sectors will be the hot areas for venture capitalists and founders in the next year, according to the prediction by Prashanth Prakash, founding partner of the global venture capital firm Accel Partners in India and the chairperson of Karnataka Startup Vision Group. Prakash said that about $25 billion has been invested into building Gen AI globally. But a lot of that capital has not yet come to India, opening up huge opportunities for startups in the country.
Fintech firm One97 Communications' managing director and chief executive officer Vijay Shekhar Sharma has voluntarily surrendered 2.1 crore shares worth about Rs 1,800 crore, as per a regulatory filing and share closing price of the company.
The fundamental issue between banks and fintech would be who will own the customer and who will be the service provider.
One97 Communications Ltd (OCL), the company that operates the Paytm brand, posted a consolidated loss of Rs 539.8 crore in the fourth quarter of 2024-25 (Q4FY25), slightly lower from the Rs 549.6 crore it reported in Q4FY24. Sequentially, the fintech company's loss widened from Rs 208.3 crore in Q3FY25 on account of a one-time exceptional expense amounting to Rs 522 crore during the quarter ended March 2025.
Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Tuesday nudged the fintech industry to break the distance barrier and have more engagements with the government and its agencies to enhance trust. Sitharaman was replying to a question by Kris Gopalakrishnan, chairman, Global Fintech Fest (GFF) 2022 advisory board, who wanted to know how to ensure trust among industry, regulators, and the government. "I don't want to sound cliche, but distance brings distrust. "So, cut the distance down, have greater engagement with the government," the minister said.
PhonePe said on Tuesday it has launched a service that will allow the fintech firm's Indian users traveling abroad to pay foreign merchants using Unified Payments Interface (UPI). 'UPI international' supports merchant outlets in UAE, Singapore, Mauritius, Nepal and Bhutan that have a local QR (quick response) code. Users will be able to make direct payments in a foreign currency from their Indian bank, like they do with international debit cards.
The decline of over 5 per cent in PB Fintech's shares (the parent company of PolicyBazaar) in the past two days presents an opportunity for long-term investors to consider buying the stock, suggest analysts. By comparison, the benchmark S&P BSE Sensex has remained flat during the same period with a negligible gain of 40 points, or 0.06 per cent. Analysts believe that the recent selling is "overdone", as the company behind the online insurance portal remains committed to achieving profitability, and the potential threat from the government's online insurance portal, Bima Sugam, might be embellished.
Mint Road, on December 21, 2023, flagged the role of self-regulatory organisations (SROs) in strengthening the compliance culture in regulated entities (REs) and providing a consultative platform for policymaking. It also decided to issue an omnibus framework for SROs.
'There will be partnerships between banks and fintech firms, but there will also be areas where they will be direct competitors.'
'I think that kind of change is coming. We should stay prepared for that change, whichever industry or sector we are in, we must be prepared.'
Flipkart Group Chief Executive Kalyan Krishnamurthy on Monday said the firm was advancing preparations for a potential initial public offering (IPO) in India, which included shifting its holding company to India from Singapore. Speaking at an internal town hall, Krishnamurthy said the company's leadership structure is strengthening and that the steps toward relocating Flipkart's legal base to India are progressing as planned, according to people familiar with the matter.
An hour-long disruption could affect around 40 million UPI transactions.
With around 33 deals valued at USD 647.5 million, India has the highest investment in the fintech segment compared to China's USD 284.9 million during the quarter ended June 30, 2020, the report released by RBSA Advisors said.
Dr Ganesh Natarajan, a special guest on rediffGURUS, has been addressing questions from Rediff readers, about how to grow professionally, how women can achieve leadership roles in Indian companies, and what it takes to succeed as an entrepreneur.