Funding cycles come and go; great teams persist, compound value for shareholders: FirstCry’s Supam Maheshwari

Brainbees Solutions, which runs omnichannel retail brand FirstCry, will open its Rs 4,188-crore IPO for subscription on August 6, two years after first starting conversations around going public. Supam Maheshwari, cofounder and CEO of FirstCry, spoke to us about the sobering of IPO pricing for new-age companies, building a hybrid online, offline retail business for more than a decade, and creating value in the business amid a reset in the technology sector. Edited excerpts.

You built and sold BrainVisa in 2007, started FirstCry in 2010, and are now taking it public. How’s it different selling versus going public…?