Zomato, the Indian food delivery start-up backed by Jack Ma’s Ant Group, received about 35 times more bids from anchor investors than it intended to sell in its blockbuster initial public offering, according to sources.
The Gurgaon-based company received bids worth 1.5 trillion rupees ($20 billion) from large funds compared with the 42 billion rupees offered, sources said. The subscription marks one of the most popular Indian IPOs among institutional investors in recent years as Zomato starts taking orders from retail investors for the $1.3bn share sale on Wednesday.
Zomato allocated about 552 million shares to 186 anchor investors including funds managed by BlackRock and Fidelity International, as well as New World Fund and Tiger Global, according to a filing on Tuesday, which didn’t provide subscription figures. The shares were sold at 76 rupees each to the anchor investors, the top of a marketed range with a minimum price of 72 rupees. Indian funds received about a third of the anchor allotment.
The interest follows a surge in Indian stocks this year and signals confidence in the market debut of the country’s first real consumer internet offering. Zomato recently raised its IPO target by 14 per cent as demand grew in a fast-growing Indian food-services market that Sanford C. Bernstein & Company estimates will hit $97bn by 2025.
Zomato is selling about 90bn rupees worth of new shares in the IPO, while its shareholder Info Edge (India) is offering as much as 3.75bn rupees worth of stocks.
Shares of Info Edge rose 0.6 per cent as of 1.40pm in Mumbai on Wednesday, compared with a 0.2 per cent gain in the benchmark index.
At about $1.3bn, the start-up’s IPO is set to be India’s biggest since SBI Cards & Payment Services’ $1.4bn share sale in March 2020, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. That said, Zomato’s record could soon be overtaken by digital payments services provider Paytm, which is preparing for an IPO with a value of more than $2bn.
Zomato’s IPO is managed by Kotak Mahindra Capital, Morgan Stanley India, Credit Suisse, BofA Securities and Citigroup.
