The Delhivery IPO will open for subscription on 11 May. The price band has been set at ₹462-487 per share, valuing the company at ₹35,283 crore at the upper end of the band.
However, the issue size has been cut by a third from the initial plan to raise ₹7,460 crore because of volatility in equity markets.
Delhivery will be the first major IPO after a brief lull in activity as companies scrapped plans to go public after the Russian invasion of Ukraine and to avoid a clash with LIC’s ₹21,000 crore IPO, India’s largest initial share sale.
Investors’ reaction to the Delhivery IPO may determine whether other such startups will brave the choppy markets to go public.
Delhivery will raise ₹4,000 crore by selling new shares, and the company’s early investors will raise an additional ₹1,235 crore through an offer for sale (OFS).
The bidding for so-called anchor investors will open on 10 May, the company said. The three-day IPO will close on 13 May. Gurugram-based Delhivery will list on exchanges on 24 May.
Of the total issue size, 75% of the shares on sale will be available for allocation to qualified institutional buyers (QIBs), 15% for non-institutional investors and the balance 10% for retail investors. Around 60% of the QIB portion is reserved for anchor investors.
Proceeds from the issue will fund the company’s acquisitions and expansion plans, with a focus on automation, technology and other strategies.
“Delhivery has appetite and ability to make larger acquisitions and integrate them within the company. Delhivery has less than 0.5% share of the $300 billion market opportunity," said Sandeep Barasia, chief business officer.
Under the offer for sale, its shareholders, including US private equity firm Carlyle Group, SoftBank, Fosun group-owned China Momentum Fund and Times Internet, will divest a part of their ownership in Delhivery.
Carlyle will sell shares worth ₹454 crore, down from earlier plans to sell ₹920 crore; SoftBank will now sell a stake worth ₹365 crore, down from ₹750 crore.
Fosun will sell via Deli CMF Pte Ltd shares worth ₹200 crore, half its earlier ₹400 crore sale plan; and Times Internet will sell up to ₹165 crore.
In addition, Delhivery’s co-founders—Kapil Bharati (its chief technology officer), Mohit Tandon and Suraj Saharan—will sell shares worth ₹5 crore, ₹40 crore and ₹6 crore, respectively.
With a 22.78% stake, SoftBank is the largest shareholder in Delhivery, while Nexus Ventures and Carlyle hold stakes of 9.23% and 7.42% respectively.
The company’s three founders hold relatively small stakes. While Kapil Bharati holds 1.11%, Mohit Tandon owns 1.88%, and Suraj Saharan has a 1.79% stake.
Delhivery was founded in 2011 by Sahil Barua, Mohit Tandon, Bhavesh Manglani, Suraj Saharan, and Kapil Bharati as a hyperlocal express logistics services firm. It became a unicorn, touching a $1 billion valuation in 2019. It had last raised $277 million in May last year in a round, led by Boston-based investment firm Fidelity, at a valuation of $3 billion.
Delhivery claims to be the largest and fastest-growing fully-integrated logistics services company in India by revenue as of FY21, covering 17,488 PIN (postal index number) codes.
In FY21, it reported a negative free cash flow of ₹246 crore as against ₹848 crore in FY20. At the same time, freight, handling and servicing cost has risen from ₹2,026 crore in FY21 to ₹3,480 crore in 9MFY22.
“Through the last four years, unit economics have improved. Adjusted Ebitda has grown from -11.3% to almost breakeven. If you just look at nine months, the second two quarters of FY22 on a combined basis were actually profitable, vis-à-vis the first quarter of FY22. We are pretty much at breakeven," said Amit Agarwal, chief financial officer, Delhivery.
Kotak Mahindra Capital Co. Ltd, Morgan Stanley India Co. Pvt. Ltd, BofA Securities India Ltd, and Citigroup Global Markets India Pvt. Ltd are managing the share sale.
