The present study aims to investigate the difference in investor perception between start-up initial public offerings (IPOs) and mainboard IPOs and to compare the issue size, issue price, lot size and subscription rates. Further study focuses on the impact of the investor perception on listing day performance of mainboard and start-up IPOs. Four hypotheses were formulated and tested to ascertain the differences between start-up and mainboard IPOs. The data for 772 IPOS (217 mainboard IPOs and 555 start-up IPOs) were collected from NSE and other websites and used for the analysis. The statistical tools like Descriptive statistics’, Mann- Whitney U Test’, Regression Analysis’ and Pearson correlation’ techniques were used for data analysis and hypothesis testing. The findings of the study reveal that there is a significant difference in the investor perception between start-up and mainboard IPOs. The regression analysis results show that 51 per cent of the change in listing gains of mainboard IPOs and 44.3 per cent of the change in listing gains of start-up IPOs are explained by the investor perception towards IPO. Further, the significant difference is observed in issue price, lot size, issue size, QIB subscription rate, NII subscription rate and the total subscription rate of mainboard and start-up IPOs.