Internet IPOs: is there appetite for loss-making start-ups.

• Position: Initial public offerings

Online marketplace IndiaMART InterMESH Ltd made a strong statement in the stock market. The company's initial public offering (IPO) was oversubscribed 36 times and its stock closed 34 per cent higher on the debut day of July 4.

Expectedly, this has led to a lot of optimism among the venture capital community and start-ups. They see this success as a sign of things to come - many more potential IPOs over the next few years that will open the doors of exit for exit-starved investors.

Venture Intelligence, a company that provides data and analysis on private company financials, analysed if there is indeed any appetite for more such Internet IPOs. The findings are interesting.

IndiaMART is not the first company in India's Internet space to go public; there are quite a few examples.

"The most successful from a stock performance perspective is InfoEdge (IPO in...