“The company is looking at a valuation of $750-800 million for the IPO that is scheduled for the fourth quarter of the current calendar year,” said a person with knowledge of the development. “It plans to raise Rs 1,200-1,500 crore via its IPO for which it will file its draft red herring prospectus next month.”
The latest round —a mix of fresh issue of shares and secondary sale by some existing investors —also saw participation from other investors such as Infoedge Venture Funds, White Oak, Bay Capital, Orios VenturePartners, Trifecta Capital and Malabar Investments, the filings show.
“GIC is investing from its new public markets fund that it has created to invest in Indian equities and to back IPO-bound companies,” said another person with knowledge of the development.
ET had earlier
reported GIC’s plans to start a $3 billion India-focused long-only equities fund.
Ixigo is the latest entrant to the IPO bandwagon, with companies such as
Paytm,
CarTrade,
Nykaa,
PolicyBazaar and
MobiKwik lining up to tap the public market. Food delivery company
Zomato’s bumper listing commanding a valuation of Rs 65,000 crore during listing has set the ball rolling for more tech startups to list in India.
According to the filings, Ixigo has raised $36 million selling new shares, while the remaining has gone towards giving its early backers part or full exit. Ixigo is backed by investors such as Sequoia Capital, Elevation Capital, Fosun and Micromax Informatics.
Launched in 2007 by Aloke Bajpai and Rajnish Kumar, Ixigo has a user base of more than 250 million. Earlier this year, the company acquired Bengaluru-based online train discovery and booking platform Confirmtkt for an undisclosed amount.
Taking to social media, Bajpai had tweeted about his AI-based company’s performance earlier this year. He said the Gurugram-based company had earned net revenue of Rs 153 crore (35% Y-o-Y growth) and an operating loss of Rs5.4 crore, which he said was an “87% profitability improvement”.
With the emergence of green shoots post pandemic, the travel and leisure industry is expected to bounce back and perform better than pre-Covid levels, according to industry executives.
EaseMyTrip, a bootstrapped travel search engine provider and Ixigo’s competitor, had
launched its Rs 510 crore IPO in March this year, listing at Rs 212.25 on the NSE, a 13.5% premium to its issue price of Rs 187. On Tuesday, its shares closed at Rs 415.
