Chennai: Secondary sales remain a key exit avenue for India’s deep-tech ecosystem, even as capital flows and public listings of deep-tech companies have continued to rise over the past decade.According to the IVCA deep-tech report, 56% of surveyed funds have achieved secondary sales, followed by mergers and acquisitions (M&A) at 40%. While 10% of the funds achieved exits through initial public offerings (IPOs), 33% of funds reported having realized no exits to date. However, strategic M&A remains the top preference, with 88% of surveyed funds citing it as their preferred exit route, followed by secondary sales (73%) and IPOs (69%).Secondary sales deliver the strongest returns, averaging 16x returns compared to roughly 5x for public market exits, the report noted. Liquidity size and realized returns diverge sharply with domestic investors leading on exit count and global players have captured the largest and most concentrated payoffs.While deep-tech funding surged to $2.96 bn in 2025, a gap in the Series B and C stages remains a major financial constraint. The survey found that fund participation declines sharply beyond the seed stage, and very few funds are able to write larger cheques for growth-stage companies. Meanwhile, institutional investors cite exit visibility as their predominant challenge.Showing momentum in the sector, 2025 saw 18 exits cumulatively worth $600 mn, compared to seven exits worth $152 mn in 2024. India’s deep-tech public-market benchmarks now include ideaForge (2023), Ola Electric (2024), and Ather Energy (2025).The sector has cumulatively attracted around $11.4 bn in private equity and venture capital investment between 2015 and 2026 (year-to-date). AI, as well as EV and battery technologies, attracted a significant share of the capital deployed, while semiconductors and space-tech emerged as the fastest-growing segments.
