Ola IPO to hit the street early 2022

The proposed listing of Ola, which counts SoftBank, Tiger Global Management and Tencent as some of its key investors, will raise half the capital through a primary issuance while the rest will be through an offer for sale (OFS) from some early backers, people with knowledge of the matter told ET.

Investment banks including Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, Kotak Mahindra Capital, Citigroup and JP Morgan are understood to be working with the company on filing preliminary documents with the market regulator in the next two months.

“There could be a few more banks as the issue is likely to be above $1.5 billion. Final mandates are expected this week itself,” said one of the persons cited above.

Earlier last month, Warburg Pincus and Temasek Holdings along with two others,
invested $500 million in Ola in what could be termed a pre-IPO round.

Ola CEO Bhavish Aggarwal did not respond to queries sent Sunday. The banks cited were not immediately available for comment.

“Whatever said and done, Ola’s valuation would be a challenge. Many funds have lowered valuations during the previous year as the Covid pandemic and the subsequent lockdown hampered the travel cab market. Although it’s recovering, it will take time to get stabilised,” said one of the persons cited.

In November, US investors T Rowe Price and Vanguard had lowered their valuations of Indian unicorns including Ola due to the disruption created by the Covid-19 pandemic.

“They are a unique platform play with a large opportunity to address multiple offerings on the back of their large consumer and supply base,” said Karan Sharma, executive director and co-head, digital and technology investment banking at Avendus Capital. “Their scale and best in industry business economics will certainly allow them to stand tall when they decide to explore a potential public listing event.”

This could turn out to be India’s year of IPOs with unicorns setting “domestic stock markets on fire and global investors in a frenzy,” the Reserve Bank of India said in August.

Close to 30 companies have already raised more than Rs 42,000 crore during the first seven months of this year, while 34 others have filed their offer documents, regulatory data showed.