New Delhi, Aug. 27 -- India's direct-to-consumer (D2C) market has spent the last five years building scale through private capital. The next question is what those businesses can achieve as fundraising becomes less of a measure of maturity and exits become more important.

Between January 2021 and August 2026, India's D2C companies raised nearly $6 billion across almost 2,000 equity funding rounds, according to Tracxn's The Rise of India's Consumer Brands: India D2C Report, and a Widening Exit Window, released on August 26.

The funding part, however, is not simply about the size of the capital pool. The composition of that funding has changed, while the number of exits points to a market where public listings and acquisitions are becomin...