New-Age IPOs: Did the Buzz Translate Into Returns? 

    Summary:

     

    Paytm, Eternal, FirstCry, Urban Company, Honasa, and Ola Electric; six new-age IPOs, six vastly different journeys. This is how each stock has moved from listing day to today, and what drove each story.

    Between 2021 and 2025, six companies that India had watched closely from their startup days made it to the public markets. Food delivery, fintech, baby products, home services, direct-to-consumer skincare, electric two-wheelers together raised tens of thousands of crores and arrived on exchanges at a time when appetite for India's digital economy was running high. Some debuted with fireworks. Others barely moved. But listing day price action, it turned out, told only a fraction of the story.

    Paytm: One of India's Largest IPO, Then a Regulatory Storm

    One 97 Communications, the Paytm parent, listed in November 2021 at ₹1,950 on the NSE against an issue price of ₹2,150. Rare for a company of that profile, it debuted in the red. Back then, it was India's largest IPO on record, raising ₹18,300 crore, opened below the issue price and kept falling. By May 2024, the share had touched its all-time low of ₹310.

    The losses and investor scepticism about profitability were already doing their damage when, in January 2024, the RBI directed Paytm Payments Bank to stop accepting fresh deposits, top-ups, and credit transactions across accounts, wallets, and FASTags. Material supervisory concerns and persistent non-compliance were cited. In the three trading sessions after that order, the stock lost roughly 50% of its value. By March 2024, Paytm Payments Bank had wound down its core banking functions. The company pivoted to Axis Bank, HDFC Bank, SBI, and Yes Bank to keep UPI services running as a third-party application provider. In April 2026, the RBI formally cancelled the banking licence, closing out a two-year process that had, by then, already made the entity functionally irrelevant.

    Recovery, though, did happen. The NPCI cleared Paytm to resume onboarding new UPI users in October 2024. The company sold its entertainment ticketing vertical to Eternal for around ₹2,048 crore and exited its stake in PayPay Japan for approximately ₹2,364 crore, bringing in meaningful cash. EBITDA losses were narrowing quarter after quarter through FY25, and by Q4FY25 the company was close to breakeven. At around ₹1,234.50, Paytm still sits 42.6% below its IPO price but has moved well clear of its lows, with the 52-week band running from ₹896.10 to ₹1,381.80.

    Eternal (Zomato): From Food Delivery to Quick Commerce Leader 

    Zomato listed in July 2021 at ₹116, a 53% jump over its IPO price of ₹76. Then came 2022, and along with it a global selloff in new-age tech stocks. The share gave back most of what it had gained on listing day. The stock lost most of its listing gains and fell close to its IPO price.

    Everything changed with Blinkit. In August 2022, Zomato acquired the quick commerce platform for roughly ₹4,447 crore in an all-stock deal. At the time, the market questioned whether it made sense. That scepticism looks misplaced now. By Q1FY26, Blinkit's net order value had crossed Zomato food deliveries for the first time. By Q4FY26, Blinkit was clocking ₹14,386 crore in NOV, running 2,243 dark stores, and had reached adjusted EBITDA of ₹37 crore. The company also rebranded to Eternal in 2025, signalling that it saw itself as more than a food app. At its 52-week high of ₹368.45, the stock was nearly 385% above the IPO price. It currently trades around ₹289.30, still roughly 280% above the ₹76 issue price, easily the best outcome among the six companies tracked here.

    FirstCry: Listing Optimism Fades Amid Ongoing Losses 

    FirstCry listed on August 13, 2024, at ₹651, a 40% premium to its issue price of ₹465. The listing day optimism did not last. By October 2024, the share price had reached its all-time high of ₹734, but the descent that followed was steep and sustained. The all-time low of ₹207.05 was recorded on February 19, 2026, representing a 68% fall from the IPO listing price and nearly 55% below the issue price.

    Profitability has been a persistent problem. FirstCry has reported net losses through every fiscal year since its listing, and with no clear breakeven timeline in sight, sentiment has stayed soft. The 52-week band of ₹207.05 to ₹438.70 shows a stock that has not held any recovery for long. At around ₹213.10 currently, it sits close to its all-time low and roughly 54% below the issue price. The company has been expanding logistics through RocketBees and Qwik while putting resources into Saudi Arabia operations, but these are early-stage pushes against a backdrop of ongoing losses.

    Urban Company: A Recent Listing Still Finding Its Level

    Urban Company made a strong debut on September 17, 2025, listing at ₹162.25, a nearly 58% premium to its ₹103 issue price after the IPO was subscribed over 103 times. Within days, on September 22, the stock had touched ₹201.18. Then it gave it all back. Pre-listing lock-ins expired, releasing around 41.4 million shares into the market in a single session, and the stock sold off sharply from its peak. By March 2026, it had fallen to an all-time low of ₹100.70. It currently trades around ₹137, above the issue price, but nowhere near where it opened.

    The bulk of the selling pressure traces back to InstaHelp, the company's 10-minute home services arm. Q4FY26 showed a consolidated loss of ₹161 crore, 57 times the ₹2.8 crore loss in the year-ago quarter, even as revenue from operations climbed 43% YoY to ₹426 crore. The company was losing roughly ₹447 on every InstaHelp order in the quarter, around 17% more than the ₹381 per-order loss the quarter before.

    Strip out InstaHelp, though, and the underlying business tells a different story. The core India consumer services segment generated ₹106 crore in adjusted EBITDA for FY26, up sharply from ₹12 crore a year earlier. International operations across UAE and Singapore turned profitable. Native, the home products brand built around water purifiers and smart locks, grew NTV 122% YoY to ₹345 crore in FY26, with its loss as a percentage of NTV improving from 25.1% to 8.9%. In Singapore, Urban Company became the only platform offering 2-hour cleaning during the year, undercutting the standard 3 to 4 hour minimum. On the other hand, the Saudi Arabia unit wound down after its commercial registration lapsed.

    Honasa Consumer: Bouncing Back on a Multi-Brand Strategy 

    Honasa listed on November 7, 2023, at ₹330, a modest 1.85% gain over the IPO price of ₹324. The stock climbed from there and hit an all-time high of roughly ₹536 in September 2024, then spent most of FY25 unwinding those gains. Slowing revenue growth, heavy advertising spend, and overreliance on the Mamaearth brand were the recurring complaints. At the lows, the share had dropped well below its listing price.

    Since late FY25, it has bounced back. The current price of around ₹469 is close to the 52-week high of ₹477 and represents a roughly 44.8% premium to the ₹324 issue price. The house-of-brands approach: Mamaearth, The Derma Co., Aqualogica, Ayuga, BBlunt, and Dr. Sheth's has reduced the concentration risk that spooked investors during the correction, spreading revenue more evenly across the portfolio.

    Ola Electric: The Steepest Decline

    Ola Electric listed on August 9, 2024, at ₹76, flat against its issue price. The stock surged quickly after listing, reaching an all-time high of ₹157.40 in the same month on enthusiasm around India's first listed EV two-wheeler manufacturer. Then the problems began to surface.

    Service centre backlogs piled up. After-sales complaints became widespread. Product quality perception took a hit. Market share in India's electric two-wheeler segment fell from around 30% in 2024 to roughly 6% by early 2026 as TVS, Bajaj, and Ather captured the ground Ola was losing. Revenue from operations dropped 57% YoY to ₹265 crore in Q3FY26. SoftBank, which had backed the company through its largest institutional position, trimmed its stake from over 17% at IPO to 13.53% by January 2026. On March 16, 2026, the share touched ₹22.25; an 85% fall from the post-listing peak in less than two years.

    Some ground has been recovered since. A turnaround campaign with EVs priced from ₹49,999 generated traction. Volume growth of 23% MoM was reported in May 2026. In-house 4680 Bharat Cell production began scaling at the Tamil Nadu Gigafactory. The stock trades at around ₹42 currently, still 44.8% below the issue price and nearly 73% off the all-time high.

    Conclusion

    These six companies offer a fairly direct lesson in the difference between a good listing story and a good business. Eternal is the only one where the business grew into, and well beyond, its listing-day valuation. Paytm survived what could have been a terminal regulatory event and is rebuilding, though still deeply underwater on an issue-price basis. Urban Company and Honasa are both above their issue prices, for different reasons; one is still early in its public market life, the other has bounced from a painful correction. FirstCry and Ola Electric are where investor patience is most strained, one with losses and no clear profitability timeline, the other still repairing a brand and an operation that fell apart in the open. Taken together, India's new-age IPO class of 2021 to 2025 has shown that what a company is worth on listing day and what it actually turns out to be are often two very different things.

    Published Date : 07 Jul 2026

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    Content Partner - Dalal Street Investment Journal Wealth Advisory Private Limited



    This article is for educational purposes only and should not be considered investment advice. Market investments are subject to risks. DSIJ Wealth Advisory Private Limited is a SEBI-registered Research Analyst (Reg. No: INH000006396) and Investment Adviser (Reg. No: INA000001142). Please consult your financial adviser before investing. 

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