In our last interaction, you said Zomato feels like an international listing because of institutional demand. Do you still hold that view after the listing day?
Clearly, no one is selling the stock and that is essentially why the price is going up. Most of the stock is held by institutions.
After listing, Zomato also entered the Rs 1 lakh crore market cap club. What is this going to mean for other IPOs like that of Paytm, Delhivery and Nykaa that are going to hit Dalal Street soon?
Not just for the start-ups, it is good news that you can come to the market and value yourself the way VCs value, which is based on growth and not just on revenue and earnings. Zomato has done an amazing job for a lot of start-ups. It is nice that wealth creation can happen for public market investors as well.
It may be a little too early but would you have any data indicating what kind of investors vied for Zomato on its listing day? Was it more institutional and mutual funds? Or was it the retail clan?
I think it is still early to say. I think there would have been a lot of institutional demand because of allotment. For sure, there was retail demand as well but the way it went up and stayed there, it seems like there is a lot of institutional appetite even at current prices.
Have the trading volumes at Zerodha been much higher than the previous days purely on account of Zomato?
No. Usually, on the first day of listing we have certain restrictions around intraday trading. A lot of retail brokers have the same kind of restrictions because of which the turnover may not be as much from the retail, at least in the intraday turnover. But it was not like a significantly larger day for us. It was just an average day for us in terms of trading volumes because the rest of the market was not doing much.
A part of Deepinder Goyal’s message was that we are here for the long term, and that they are not going to get bogged down by short-term strategies and short-term profits. What do you make of that message?
I think we need more CEOs and founders communicating directly with shareholders and not just do it through board meetings, etc. I think it is a welcome change. What he said is right. I am sure Deepinder is not looking at this as an end. The post talks about this as a new beginning for them. I hope a lot more companies start doing this.
