What’s buzzing in the startup zone? It’s profitable growth.

This buzzword echoed clear and loud at fintech major Razorpay’s FTX 25 event last week, where startup founders, government stakeholders, investors and enterprises converged to talk about the state of the ecosystem.

Although fintech and the financial services industry was at the heart of it all, we even got a glimpse of how startups are practicing greater financial discipline, more insights on the rapid strides by quick commerce, how GenAI is shaping up and of course, startup IPOs.

In many ways, IPOs are the trigger for the profitable growth trend among Indian startups. 23 startups are in various stages of preparing for public listings by the start of 2025 — many of which were at FTX talking about the reality of listing publicly and the process behind it. Profitability was once again at the front and centre.

“Unlike the VC ecosystem, the public markets are not forgiving. There are shorter periods of wait and, therefore, the way startups were operating a few years ago in terms of growth and profit targets are distinct. The VC capital has not become scarce, but the sentiment of the private investment community has changed,” Gaurav Jain, senior vice-president at sovereign wealth fund GIC, told Inc42 on the sidelines of the event.

Startups are now reviewing investment cycles every week, instead of every quarter, and turned to AI to track the pulse of changing consumer preferences and suggest discount bonanzas around consumer loyalty. “Not just growth, it is the sustenance of profits after IPO which has become a crucial metric,” said Arpit Chug, chief financial officer of Razorpay.

Even listed new-age majors such as Paytm, Nykaa, Zomato, Mamaearth, Ola Electric, Swiggy and others have yet to show consistent profits, let alone profitable growth. Some of them are trading well below their issue price, highlighting the need to........

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