The 5 Metrics Indian LPs Demand In Every Report (And Why GPs Can't Fake Them)

LPs used to rank a dozen things when they judged a fund. Not anymore. Distributions to Paid-In capital, or DPI, is now the number they rank first, and LPs today weigh it 2.5 times more heavily than they did three years ago. That single shift explains why the 5 metrics Indian LPs demand in every report have become non-negotiable for every fund manager operating in India's private markets.

Key Takeaways

• DPI, TVPI, IRR, MOIC, and NAV are the 5 metrics Indian LPs demand in every report. No exceptions, no substitutes.
• LPs trust DPI over every other number because it shows cash actually returned, not paper gains.
• TVPI and MOIC often get confused. They measure different things and LPs know the difference even when GPs blur it.
• Fund closes are taking longer. 38% of funds now take over two years to close, up from 9% in 2019, and slow LP reporting makes that worse.
• Spreadsheet-based fund reporting breaks down the moment a fund has more than a handful of portfolio companies and LPs.
• Platforms like Folio automate DPI, TVPI, IRR, MOIC, and NAV tracking so GPs aren't rebuilding these numbers manually every quarter.
• India's PE-VC ecosystem crossed real scale in 2025, and every rupee of it routes back through a report an LP has to trust.

Why Indian LPs Demand These 5 Metrics In Every Fund Report

An LP commits capital and waits years to see it back. And in that waiting period, the report is the only proof of life the fund gives them.

India's PE-VC market moved $36 billion into deployment in 2025, a more disciplined and selective phase than the years before it. Deal volumes rose 10% year-over-year even as average deal size fell 25%, which means more transactions, smaller checks, and more moving parts for an LP to track across a portfolio.

That complexity is exactly why the 5 metrics Indian LPs demand in every report exist. Each one strips out noise and tells the LP something specific: cash returned, total value created, rate of return over time, multiple on capital, and current worth. Nothing else in a fund report matters as much.

The 5 Metrics Indian LPs Demand In Every Report, Ranked By What Matters Most

Metric 1: DPI, The Number LPs Trust Over Everything Else

DPI answers one question. How much cash has the LP actually gotten back?

Everything else in a fund report can be a projection, a mark, an assumption. DPI can't. It's cash in the LP's bank account, divided by cash they put in.

60% of LPs still prefer conventional exits, meaning IPOs, M&A, and strategic sales, over alternative liquidity routes like dividend recaps. Because those exits are what actually move DPI, and DPI is what LPs use to decide whether to re-up with the same GP for the next fund.

Metric 2: TVPI, The Full Picture Metric

TVPI adds unrealized value to what DPI already counts. It's DPI plus everything still sitting on the books, marked at current fair value.

An LP reads TVPI as the honest scorecard for a fund that's still active. A fund three years into its life should show a healthy TVPI even if DPI is still low, because most of the value hasn't been distributed yet.

But a GP who leans only on TVPI and avoids DPI is telling an incomplete story. LPs have learned to ask for both, every quarter, side by side.

Metric 3: IRR, The Metric Everyone Misreads

IRR accounts for time. A ₹10 crore return in year 2 is worth more than the same return in year 8, and IRR is the only one of the 5 metrics Indian LPs demand in every report that captures that.

Yes, IRR can be manipulated with early distributions or fast follow-on rounds. LPs know this, which is exactly why they never look at IRR alone.

They pair it with MOIC and DPI to see whether the rate of return is backed by real cash, or just clever timing.

Did You Know?

Total exit activity in India's PE-VC market hit $34 billion in 2025, a 3% rise as investors pushed harder for liquidity through public markets and strategic sales.

Source: IVCA | Bain & Company

Metric 4: MOIC, The Multiple That Cuts Through Noise

MOIC is the simplest of the 5 metrics Indian LPs demand in every report. Total value divided by invested capital. No time-weighting, no discounting.

An LP comparing three funds across three different vintages can't compare their IRRs directly. Timing distorts that comparison too much.

But MOIC strips timing out entirely. A 3x MOIC is a 3x MOIC, whether it took three years or eight.

Metric 5: NAV, The Foundation Every Other Metric Sits On

NAV is the current fair value of everything the fund still holds. TVPI, unrealized MOIC, and every forward-looking projection an LP sees starts here.

Get NAV wrong and every other number built on top of it is wrong too. That's why LPs scrutinize valuation methodology as closely as the number itself.

Under SEBI-aligned AIF reporting, NAV has to be defensible, documented, and consistent quarter over quarter. No workarounds. No grey areas.

What LPs Actually Do With These Numbers Once They Land

An LP doesn't read a fund report once and file it away. They compare it against every other report in their portfolio, every quarter, looking for consistency and red flags.

Think of it the way you'd think of an energy transfer earnings report. Public, standardized, comparable across periods, and audited enough that nobody has to take it on faith. LPs want private fund reporting held to that same bar, even though private markets don't carry the same disclosure rules public companies do.

That's the gap Indian GPs are being asked to close. Good lp reporting isn't a courtesy anymore. It's the price of getting the next fund raised.

Why Spreadsheet Chaos Breaks LP Reporting At Scale

A fund with five portfolio companies can run its LP reporting out of a spreadsheet. A fund with thirty companies across two vintages cannot.

Cap tables live in spreadsheets. Fund NAVs live in spreadsheets. Distribution schedules live in spreadsheets. And every one of those spreadsheets has to reconcile perfectly before a single LP report goes out.

Fund closes are already slower than they used to be. 20 months is now the average time it takes a GP to raise a fund, nearly double the pre-pandemic pace, and every extra week spent reconciling numbers by hand is a week an LP spends wondering whether the fund manager has real control over the portfolio.

Building LP Reporting That Doesn't Break Trust

We built Folio because we watched fund managers lose thousands of hours a year to exactly this problem. Manual processes, fragmented tools, and spreadsheets that don't talk to each other.

Folio treats DPI, TVPI, IRR, MOIC, and NAV as a single source of truth, tracked automatically across every fund and every portfolio company. Capital calls, distributions, and quarterly LP statements run through one platform, built on a SEBI-aligned framework for Cat I and Cat II AIF structures.

India's private equity and venture capital ecosystem now moves tens of billions of dollars a year, and every rupee routes back through a report an LP has to trust.

How Folio Turns The 5 Metrics Indian LPs Demand In Every Report Into An Automatic Statement

If you're a venture fund, family office, or LP tracking commitments across a growing portfolio, Folio gives you real-time DPI, TVPI, IRR, MOIC, and NAV without a single manual reconciliation. Portfolio Intelligence tracks valuations and ownership dilution across every company in the fund, and the LP Reporting module generates quarterly statements automatically through a self-service LP portal. GPs stop rebuilding the same five numbers every quarter by hand, and start managing the fund instead of managing the spreadsheet.

If your portfolio companies also need their cap tables and ESOP pools tracked cleanly at the source, that data feeds the same fund reporting downstream through Tabulate, so the numbers a portfolio company reports and the numbers a fund reports to its LPs actually match.

See what full-lifecycle fund infrastructure looks like at incentiv.finance.

Conclusion

The 5 metrics Indian LPs demand in every report, DPI, TVPI, IRR, MOIC, and NAV, aren't a checklist a GP fills out to keep LPs quiet. They're the entire language LPs use to decide whether a fund manager gets their capital again.

India's private markets have gotten too large and too fast-moving for spreadsheet chaos to hold that language together. We are building the infrastructure so that every fund report is an open book, not a negotiation.

Frequently Asked Questions

What are the 5 metrics Indian LPs demand in every report?

The 5 metrics Indian LPs demand in every report are DPI (Distributions to Paid-In capital), TVPI (Total Value to Paid-In capital), IRR (Internal Rate of Return), MOIC (Multiple on Invested Capital), and NAV (Net Asset Value). Together they show cash returned, total value created, rate of return, capital multiple, and current fund worth.

Why do LPs care more about DPI than IRR in 2026?

DPI shows actual cash returned, while IRR can be shaped by the timing of early distributions. LPs now weigh DPI roughly 2.5 times more heavily than they did three years ago because it's harder to manipulate and easier to trust.

What's the difference between TVPI and MOIC?

TVPI measures total value (realized plus unrealized) against paid-in capital, while MOIC measures total value against invested capital, ignoring fees and carry. They look similar but LPs read them for different purposes, and mixing them up in a report signals sloppy fund reporting.

How often should GPs send LP reporting updates?

Quarterly is standard practice across Indian AIF structures, with DPI, TVPI, IRR, MOIC, and NAV recalculated and shared every quarter without exception. Annual audited statements sit on top of that quarterly cadence.

Is spreadsheet-based LP reporting still viable in 2026?

It breaks down fast once a fund crosses a handful of portfolio companies or multiple vintages. Platforms like Folio replace that manual process with automated tracking of the 5 metrics Indian LPs demand in every report, cutting the reconciliation time GPs used to spend by hand.

What happens if a GP misreports NAV to LPs?

Every metric built on top of NAV, including TVPI and unrealized MOIC, becomes unreliable, and LPs treat that as a trust failure, not a rounding error. Under SEBI-aligned AIF frameworks, valuation methodology has to be documented and defensible every quarter.

Why does DPI matter more for GPs raising their next fund?

LPs use DPI as proof that a GP can actually convert paper gains into cash, and 60% of LPs still favor conventional exits like IPOs and strategic sales that drive DPI upward. A GP with strong TVPI but weak DPI often struggles to close the next fund on schedule.