New Delhi, Feb. 10 -- Initial public offerings are not all that they're cracked up to be for private equity (PE) and venture capital (VC) investors seeking to monetize their holdings.

Even though IPOs are considered the primary liquidity event, data over the past five years shows that investors have realized a significantly larger exit value through post-listing bulk and block deals than through the offer-for-sale (OFS) segment of an IPO.

Since 2024, there have been 43 PE- and VC-backed IPOs where shares worth almost Rs.59,000 crore were sold through the OFS route, data from Prime Database showed. This was about one-third of the over Rs.1.9 lakh crore worth of shares sold through post-listing bulk and block deals.

An OFS during an IPO ...