IPOs fall back as block deals race ahead
Although IPOs are considered the primary liquidity event, data over the past five years show that investors achieve significantly greater exit value through post-IPO lump sum and block deals than through the offer-for-sale (OFS) segment of the IPO.
Since 2024, there have been 43 PE and VC-backed IPOs where shares have reached near value. ₹59,000 crore were sold through OFS, according to data from Prime Database. This was about a third of the total ₹Post-listing, shares worth Rs 1.9 million crore were sold through bulk and block deals.
OFS during an IPO allows a company’s promoters and existing investors, including PE and VC firms, to sell their shares to the public. After listing, they have the option to sell their shares on stock exchanges through bulk or block deals.
More than 950 block deals have been concluded in the last two years alone; This underscores a growing preference among funds to delay major exits until after listing due to volatile valuations.
While block deals peaked in 2024 and slowed down in 2025, they began to slowly open in the second half. Legal experts said this was normal after an intense monetization phase and did not reflect a structural constraint on exits.
Abhishek Guha, partner at Trilegal, said that after a year of aggressive selling, the funds are resetting the pace of exit.
“We expect to see many exits via block sales in 2026,” Guha added.
The latest wave of post-listing exits began in late 2023 and has continued since then, except for brief pauses triggered by trade-related and geopolitical disruptions.
expanding space
In 2021, investors sold shares worth approx. ₹48,000 crore through OFS, almost ₹62,500 crore through bulk and block trading post-IPO, according to Prime Database. The gap between IPO-stage exits and post-IPO exits has widened since then.
MintAnalysis of Venture Intelligence data underlines this shift. In 2021, IPOs accounted for 12% of total PE outflows, while block trades accounted for 23%. In 2025, block trades accounted for 30% of exits, while IPO exits dropped to 8%. This difference was most evident in 2023, when block trading increased to 47% of total exits, while IPO exits fell to only 6%.
Like Mint Last year, it was reported that selling shareholders were increasingly reducing the OFS component of IPOs, preferring to hold back shares and pursue exits through block deals and secondary sales once companies were listed.
“The block deal ecosystem was much less active five years ago. What has changed is the depth of domestic liquidity, especially from investment funds, which are now willing and able to absorb large secondary shares,” said Pranav Haldea, managing director of Prime Database Group.
He added that many private equity funds of the old type have now reached the exit stage and block deals are emerging as a preferred mechanism for making money.
Pricing control combined with discretion and speed make block deals structurally more attractive to large financial investors, Guha said.
“Since block deals are private and negotiated, there is much more flexibility in pricing,” Guha said.
He emphasized that transactions in block agreements are specifically regulated. Buyers are generally institutional and have less market influence.
“Block transactions can usually be completed within 24 hours, while OFS is a slower, process-oriented way,” he added.
OFS limits
There are also limits on how many shares can be sold in OFS during an IPO.
“If around 70 percent of a company is held by investors and at most 25 percent of that can be sold in an IPO, you are realistically looking at roughly 15-16 percent that can be liquidated through OFS,” said Vikram Gawande, an investor at Blume Ventures.
While bulk and block trades are structurally larger than OFS transactions, the widening gap between listing-stage exits and post-listing transactions indicates a behavioral shift in how private market investors sort liquidity.
In fact, PEs and VCs accounted for 64% of overall IPO exits in 2021. Over the last two years, this figure has fallen sharply to an average of 28%, indicating greater reliance on post-IPO exits.
Experts stated that this was partly due to changing ownership structures. Trilegal’s Guha said most PEs today hold a controlling stake, making it structurally impossible to exit the IPO entirely.
As a result, IPOs increasingly function as an initial liquidity event rather than a final liquidity event.
