Indian IPOs pick up after four-month break

By Julia Fioretti

Initial public offerings in India are picking up again after a four-month hiatus, during which the market was dominated by follow-on share sales and block trades.

Rossari Biotech Ltd., a Mumbai-based specialty chemicals maker, is looking to raise as much as $66 million and last week received orders for 79.4 times the shares offered in a sign of strong demand. Meanwhile, a Blackstone Group Inc.-backed real estate investment trust, Mindspace Business Parks REIT, plans to raise as much as about $600 million in what would be the country’s second REIT IPO.

The two deals come after first-time share sales largely dried up in the South Asian country. The last big IPO was the $1.44 billion listing of SBI Cards & Payment Services Ltd. in March. Following that, there have been a number of tiny deals with only one raising more than $1 million, data compiled by Bloomberg show.

India’s equity markets have recovered significantly since they hit a trough in March, along with many of the region’s other indexes. The S&P BSE Sensex is up 44% from March 23, as is the the NSE Nifty 50.

While IPOs were quiet, India’s equity capital markets were nevertheless busy with follow-on offerings as companies sought funds to weather the coronavirus-induced lockdown and shareholders sold stakes. In May, some $5.44 billion worth of existing and new shares were sold in a record month for equity offerings. June saw 10 follow-on offerings raise $2.43 billion, the most in terms of deal count in a year, data compiled by Bloomberg show.

Investors may still have to wait a while for India’s unicorns -- such as Ola, Flipkart and Paytm -- to go public though. Softbank-backed online insurance platform Policybazaar aims to list in 2021, potentially becoming the first of the mega-startups to debut.