

Today, the AI story is not well understood in the Indian market: Fractal CEO
Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. MUMBAI : Squeezed out on the valuation Fractal Analytics sought for the initial public offering (IPO), its founder feels that public market investors have yet to fully understand the AI sector. The management is citing investor scepticism towards AI complexity and the need for market education as it prepares for a market debut at a lower valuation.
“Investors don't understand complexity. They don't like complexity. And there's a huge need to just educate the market on AI because there are not a lot of AI stocks out there," Srikanth Velamakanni, founder of Fractal Analytics, told Mint in an interview.
According to Velamakanni, category creators have to go through that fire. “While there's a broader understanding that AI is great and AI is going to change everything, etc., most people don't understand how AI works in the enterprise, and how AI can change enterprise performance significantly, and how companies can use AI to dramatically improve their revenues and the productivity and things like that," he said. "So that I felt was the big gap, and we attempted to explain to the investors that the AI excitement in the world needs to be translated into enterprise performance, and you need a fractal or a Palantir kind of company to actually make this happen," he added.
On Wednesday, the company announced its price band for the IPO at ₹857-900 per share, implying an indicative valuation of ₹15,473 crore or $1.86 billion, according to Mint's calculations. This valuation would signify a 24% markdown from the company's previous fundraising in July 2025, where it was valued at $2.44 billion. At that time, Fractal had raised $170 million from investors, including Trust Investment Advisors, White
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