The Emerging-Markets Exit Problem and How to Plan for It From Day One
In emerging markets, the exit is the hardest part of an investment, and the work to solve it starts at seed, not at Series C. Public markets are thin, the list of buyers is short and holding periods are long. A company that was not built to be bought often cannot be sold, however well it performs.
Planning from day one does not mean building to sell. It means knowing who could own the company one day, and making sure its structure, governance and records would survive that buyer's diligence.
This piece is a diagnostic for founders and early investors. For the later-stage view, when a sale is about 24 months away, see planning a strategic exit.
Key takeaways
- The exit problem is a design problem, not a timing problem, because scarce buyers only acquire companies that are easy to buy.
- In our view, the most likely buyer is a regional or global strategic acquirer, while IPOs stay open to only a few regional champions.
- Exits take longer everywhere, and PitchBook data puts the median time to exit for unicorns at 9.2 years at the end of 2025.
- Structure, governance and clean records decided at seed set how fast and how cleanly a company can be sold later.
- A buyer map updated every year is the cheapest exit-planning tool a founder has.
Why exits are the binding constraint
Capital is arriving in markets like Central Asia faster than exits are. RISE Research's 2026 report found that venture investment across the region reached a record of about $320 million in 2025, with two deals accounting for 61% of it. Public data on regional startup exits is far thinner than data on rounds raised. That gap is the exit problem in one sentence.
Even in deep markets, exits now take longer. PitchBook data cited by Marquette Associates in 2026 put the median time to exit for unicorns at 9.2 years at the end of 2025, up from 6.1 years in 2016. In markets with fewer buyers and smaller exchanges, founders and investors should not plan on anything shorter.
Exits also concentrate where markets are deep. The Global Private Capital Association reported that exits across the emerging and growth markets it tracks rose 33% to $89.5 billion in 2024, and India alone accounted for $27.9 billion of that. Smaller markets compete for a small share of buyer attention.
An exit is not an event at the end. It is a set of decisions made at the start.
Who actually buys
There are five realistic buyers for an emerging-market company, and an IPO is the least common route.
Regional strategics. Large companies in neighboring markets that buy to expand. Kaspi.kz, the Kazakh fintech and marketplace group, agreed in 2024 to acquire 65.41% of Turkey's Hepsiburada for about $1.13 billion, a sign that the region now has acquirers with cross-border ambitions.
Global strategics. International companies buying market entry, licenses, customers or talent. They pay for what would take years to build, and they diligence hard.
Private equity, growth funds and secondary buyers. Buyers of profitable, growing companies, or of an early investor's stake. Jefferies reported a record $240 billion of global secondary volume in 2025. That volume is made up of LP sales of fund interests and GP-led deals, but the mechanism matters for startups too: a later investor buys out an earlier one, and the company is not sold.
Development finance institutions. DFIs more often invest alongside others than buy companies outright, but their participation in later rounds can create room for earlier shareholders to sell part of their stake.
Public markets. Possible, but for a few. Kaspi.kz raised about $1 billion in its Nasdaq IPO in January 2024 while already listed in London, and Air Astana's 2024 listing on the London Stock Exchange, the Astana International Exchange and the Kazakhstan Stock Exchange raised about $370 million. Both were large, established companies long before they listed.
| Exit route | Who buys | What they pay for | What must be ready |
|---|---|---|---|
| Regional strategic | Leaders in neighboring markets | Market share, customers, licenses | Clean structure, audited accounts |
| Global strategic | International companies entering | Speed of entry, talent, technology | IP ownership, compliance, English records |
| PE or growth fund | Funds buying control or large stakes | Profitable growth, cash flow | Quality of earnings, governance |
| Secondary sale | Later-stage investors | An entry into a proven company | Transfer rights, current cap table |
| DFI-backed round | Development and impact investors | Development outcomes plus returns | ESG reporting, governance |
| IPO | Public investors | Scale, profits, track record | Years of audits, a board, disclosure |
Designing for an exit from seed
The decisions that make a company buyable are cheap at seed and expensive later. Four matter most.
Structure
What to do at seed: Choose a holding structure that a foreign buyer or investor would accept, and put founders' shares, IP and key contracts inside it. The options are compared in how to structure an investment in Central Asia.
What it saves later: A restructuring under deal pressure, with tax and legal costs that land on the sellers.
Governance
What to do at seed: Keep board minutes, written shareholder approvals and a single, current shareholders' agreement.
What it saves later: Weeks spent reconstructing decisions that a buyer's lawyers will ask to see.
Clean records
What to do at seed: IP assignments from every founder and contractor, a reconciled cap table, signed customer contracts and accounts that can be audited.
What it saves later: Price reductions, escrows and indemnities that buyers impose when records are missing. Our M&A readiness checklist shows what buyers diligence first.
A buyer map
What to do at seed: List the companies most likely to buy you, why each one would, and who you know there. Update the list every year.
What it saves later: A cold start. Relationships built over years tend to shorten a sale process and support the price.
Realistic timelines
The stages below are a planning frame, not a schedule. Each stage carries an exit task that most founders leave too late.
- Stage 1, seed: set the structure, clean the cap table, assign IP and start the buyer map.
- Stage 2, Series A: begin board reporting and annual audits, and meet potential acquirers as partners, not as sellers.
- Stage 3, growth: build commercial partnerships with likely buyers and consider a partial secondary for early investors.
- Stage 4, pre-exit: run vendor due diligence, appoint advisors and test buyer interest well before a target sale date.
- Stage 5, sale: run a competitive process with at least two types of buyer at the table.
GETVISION's strategic advisory work with companies at Round B and beyond usually begins around Stage 3, where expansion, merger and exit choices start to overlap.
Exit-readiness diagnostic
Answer each question yes or no. Every no is work to schedule, not a reason to panic.
- Could a foreign buyer acquire the whole company without restructuring it first?
- Does the company, not a founder, own all IP, domains and key contracts?
- Does the cap table reconcile with the registry and with every signed instrument?
- Are the last two years of accounts audited or ready for audit?
- Can you name the ten most likely buyers and one contact at each?
- Can more than one person run sales, finance and operations?
- Do your shareholder documents include drag-along and tag-along rights?
- Would your largest customer contracts survive a change of control?
Three or more no answers mean the company would lose time and price in a sale today. The good news is that each one can be fixed in months, and fixing it early costs far less than fixing it with a buyer waiting.
Frequently Asked Questions
Most exit through a sale to a regional or global strategic buyer, through a sale of shares to a later-stage or private equity investor or, for a few large companies, through an IPO. The right route depends on the sector, the company's size and which buyers are active in the region.
Local exchanges are often small and illiquid, and foreign listings require scale, profitability and years of audited reporting. Only a few regional champions reach that point.
At seed. Structure, IP ownership, governance and clean records are cheap to set up early and expensive to fix under deal pressure.
It is a sale of existing shares from one shareholder to another, such as an early investor selling to a later-stage fund. It gives liquidity without selling the company and usually needs approvals under the transfer restrictions in the shareholders' agreement.
They rarely buy companies outright. More often they invest alongside other investors in later rounds, which can create an opportunity for earlier shareholders to sell part of their stake.
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Hands-On Capital: What Post-Investment Support Should Actually Look LikeGETVISION invests in early-stage, AI-driven ventures in emerging markets and works hands-on with founders after the round. Founders can submit a deal through RaiseTalks, where every company is scored on Team, Product, Market and Deal.