A Diwali bonus for bourses, courtesy startup IPOs
The first week of November is set to light up Dalal Street, in more ways than one. By the time the national stock exchanges are done with Muhurat trading on November 4 to mark the festival of Diwali, two new-age, internet startups would have sold stock worth at least $1.5 billion in their initial public offerings. The blockbuster IPO — in fact, the biggest in India’s corporate history — will arrive after the long Diwali weekend.
Nykaa founder Falguni Nayar
Nykaa IPO: As of writing this letter, the IPO of FSN E-commerce Ventures — the operator of India’s biggest cosmetics etailer — was subscribed nearly five times, with retail investors doing the bulk of the purchasing.
According to NSE data, investors have placed bids for 127,748,892 shares against the issue size of 26,485,479. And with one more day to go for bidding, and institutional investors still warming up to the offering, a bumper listing is definitely on the cards.
Also Read: Nykaa IPO details: All you need to know before subscribing
PB Fintech founders (from left) Yashish Dahiya and Alok Bansal
Policybazaar IPO: The Nov. 1-3 IPO of PB Fintech, the parent company of Policybazaar and Paisabazaar, is looking to raise Rs 5,700 crore by issuing shares in a price band of Rs 940-980 apiece. This ascribes the insurtech operator a valuation of nearly Rs 45,000 crore (about $6.1 billion).
The offering is a mix of fresh issue of shares worth Rs 3,750 crore and an offer for sale, wherein founders including CEO Yashish Dahiya will offload stock worth Rs 392.50 crore. Investor SoftBank Vision Fund Python will cash in shares worth Rs 1,875 crore.
Also Read: Policybazaar raises Rs 2,569 crore from anchor investors ahead of IPO
Paytm founder Vijay Shekhar Sharma
Paytm IPO: The $2.5-billion behemoth drops on Nov. 8, though its founder Vijay Shekhar Sharma would have wanted a pre-Diwali share sale. He, however, has made peace with the valuation that One97 Communications — the parent entity — will command when the IPO hits the floor.
“We don’t need to hike the price just because everybody is ready to give money. We kept it (valuation of $19.5-$20 billion) rationally and chose to put a lower number in the choice of different valuations we had on the table,” he said on Thursday.
Shares in the Rs 18,300-crore Paytm IPO will be issued in a price band of Rs 2,080-2,150 apiece. The subscription is set to end on Nov. 10. The company is aiming to start trading on the bourses a week later.
Also Read: Paytm founder to self-finance stake increase in insurance business
The year of the Startup IPOs: Truly, the upcoming week will be like none other. The year itself has been an outlier, as far as internet firms tapping the public markets is concerned.
What started with Zomato in July (and Nazara Technologies in March and CarTrade Tech in August), has continued with Paytm now. And given how high the stack of papers is getting at Sebi’s offices in Mumbai, it seems the startup fireworks at Dalal Street have only started.
Also Read: Delhivery eyes $4.5-5 billion valuation in IPO
Let’s move on to the other big developments of the week.
OTHER BIG STORIES BY OUR REPORTERS
Exclusive Interviews
Zomato IPO was a desperate contingency plan: CEO
Zomato CEO Deepinder Goyal
The Zomato IPO earlier this year was not by design, founder and chief executive Deepinder Goyal said in an interview earlier this week. Instead, it was a “desperate contingency plan” which had to be kicked off amid the worst crisis ever faced by the food-delivery major.
- “We didn’t set out to break the glass ceiling or do anything big. We were just trying to live and survive and what happened, happened,” Goyal said. “The company was staring at a six-month cash runway, and an IPO seemed like the only option left on the table.”
The firm was the winner in the ‘Startup of the Year’ category at The Economic Times Startup Awards 2021, for the path it has paved for other homegrown startups to list on the bourses. (read here)
One large platform is the problem, not all of Big Tech, says Snap CEO
Snap CEO Evan Spiegel
The challenges that we are seeing today are not necessarily problems faced by all of Big Tech. It is in particular, one large platform that’s the problem, according to Snap CEO Evan Spiegel, who spoke with us after Snapchat clocked 100 million users in India.
- “That’s the problem that we are really dealing with today. That business has really large influence and operates multiple very large platforms that reach billions of people,” he said.
Click here to read what he had to say on Snapchat’s dramatic turnaround since 2017, the ubiquitous Stories format that Snapchat pioneered, the Facebook fiasco, and Apple’s recent privacy changes, which caused Snap’s shares to plummet 25% last week.
Facebook goes Meta
Facebook Inc. has officially changed its name to Meta Platforms Inc., or Meta in a bid to reflect its focus on building the metaverse. The name change was accompanied by a new logo designed like an infinity symbol (an uncanny resemblance to Hyperloop’s logo).
- “We are at the beginning of the next chapter for the internet, and it’s the next chapter for our company too,” CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in a letter. “The next platform will be even more immersive — an embodied internet where you’re in the experience, not just looking at it. We call this the metaverse, and it will touch every product we build.”
The move is meant to signal the company’s ambition to be known for more than social media, which isn’t exactly a surprise. The company is facing increasing scrutiny — in India and the United States — over its business practices, following the revelations made by whistleblower Frances Haugen, a former employee. Findings from Haugen’s documents were first published by The Wall Street Journal and then other media organisations.
Also Read: Facebook’s 2019 India experiment paints damning picture of gore, fake news
Jobs, Jobs, Jobs
■ It is a mad rush for talent across unicorns in India.
There are nearly 70 unicorns — startups valued at $1 billion or more — in India and these are likely to create 125,000-160,000 white-collar jobs over the next 2-3 quarters, according to two separate studies conducted by EMA Partners and CIEL HR Services for ET.
■ India’s Top 5 IT firms nearly matched last year’s hiring numbers in the first six months of the ongoing fiscal.
Tata Consultancy Services, Infosys, Wipro, HCL Technologies and Tech Mahindra added 122,546 employees in April-September 2021. That compares with an estimated 138,000 hires in the fiscal ended March 31, 2021, according to Nasscom data.
Related Coverage
■ Cognizant plans employee sops to arrest highest attrition rate among peers
■ Indian IT firms ramp up hiring of freshers to highest in a decade
From the crypto world
ETtech DEALS DIGEST
- Adani Enterprises has acquired a “significant minority stake” in Flipkart’s Cleartrip, giving India’s biggest airports operator a foothold in the fast-growing online travel space amid its super app plans.
- Acko has raised $255 million in a new funding round led by private equity majors General Atlantic and Multiples Private Equity, valuing the four-year-old general insurance startup at $1.1 billion.
- Groww, an online investment platform, has raised $251 million in a new round of funding, tripling its valuation in barely six months to $3 billion, or about Rs 22,500 crore.
Also Read: Top 10 funding rounds, M&A deals this week
Other Top Sories
■ The SaaS startup ecosystem in India, which has already produced over 10 unicorns, is increasingly turning to large local enterprises as more businesses seek to automate their processes.
SaaS firms are offering flexible subscription models to ease the transition for these enterprise clients and winning significant market share across segments, say industry experts. (read more)
■ RBI’s new auto debit rules have adversely affected India’s subscription economy that includes consumers and small businesses, and tech heavyweights Amazon and Netflix.
We took stock of the new rules, the scale of disruption, as well as alternative modes, which can be used by customers to make their payments that have been failing in the month of October. (read more)
■ After helping Tata Group gain a firm foothold in India’s e-grocery space, BigBasket has now taken up a new task — to build a unified supply chain and logistics nationwide for the group’s super app project.
The online grocer is currently putting together a team to set up a unified logistics and supply chain for all Tata Consumer firms that are part of the upcoming TataNeu super app. (read more)
That’s it from us this week. Stay safe and get that jab.
Graphics and illustrations by Rahul Awasthi in Mumbai.
( News Source :Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by Rashtra News staff and is published from a economictimes.indiatimes.com feed.)
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