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The much-awaited Paytm IPO (One97 Communications Ltd) will hit the market on November 8 and close on 10. The IPO size has been enhanced to ₹18,300 crore from ₹16,600 crore, sources said, adding that the red herring prospectus has been filed with Registrar of Companies.
The IPO will include an offer for sale component of ₹10,000 crore and a fresh issue of ₹8,300 crore. The anchor investors’ placement is scheduled for November 3, it is learnt.
$20-b enterprise value
Paytm and its bankers are looking to set a price band of ₹2,080-2,150 at an enterprise valuation of $20 billion.
The upcoming Paytm IPO will be the largest-ever primary offer to hit the capital market in India. This proposed mop up is higher than the Coal India public issue that had raised ₹15,475 crore in 2010.
Nearly half the offer of sale component in the Paytm IPO will be accounted for by Ant Financial, which owns 29.6 per cent in Paytm and is its largest shareholder. The balance will be from Elevation Capital, SoftBank and others.
The merchant banks (book running lead managers) for the issue are Morgan Stanley India, Goldman Sachs (India), ICICI Securities, Axis Capital, JP Morgan, Citigroup Global Markets India and HDFC Bank.
Paytm is India’s leading digital payments and financial services platform for consumers and merchants. As of March 31, 2021, Paytm served 33.3-crore consumers and 21 million merchants. SEBI had last week cleared the IPO of Paytm, which was founded by Vijay Shekhar Sharma in 2020.
Drops pre-IPO fund raise
The digital payments major has shelved its plans to go in for a ₹2,000-crore pre-IPO placement.
The draft red herring prospectus had mentioned pre-IPO placement as an option.
Paytm IPO launch will happen close on the heels of IPOs of new age businesses like Nykaa and Policybazaar, which are set to tap the capital market on October 28 and November 1, respectively.
After the blockbuster listing of Zomato this year, there has been tremendous investor interest on new-age consumer tech and fintech platform-based businesses. The sharp increase in penetration of smartphones in recent years and cheap data plans have provided a fillip to such internet-based platform businesses.
