Context: The market regulator, SEBI made it easier for startups to go public in India as it moved to stanch a potential exodus of local companies to foreign capital markets.

Key Changes'

• It has reduced the requirement for issuers to have 25% of pre-issue capital held by eligible investors to one year from two years.
• Allowing IPO-bound startups to allocate up to 60% of the issue size to any eligible investor with a lock-in of 30 days on such shares. 
• Currently, startups going public are barred from making discretionary allotments.

Background

• Many startups focus on growing their revenues faster than mature companies, often sacrificing profits in the initial years for growth. 
• Since profitability is a key criterion for companies to get listed on the main board of stock exchanges.
• To overcome this hurdle Sebi created an alternative listing platform called Innovators Growth Platform

About Innovators Growth Platform

• Erstwhile known as ‘Institutional Trading Platform’ for listing of issuers which are in intensive use of technology, information technology, intellectual property, data analytics, bio-technology or nano-technology to provide products, services or business platforms with substantial value addition.
• It is a platform on stock exchanges where start-ups can list and trade on their shares.
• It is a platform where listing norms such as IPO norms, pre-issue capital etc are eased for start up.