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And boAt isn’t the only one to do this. Used-car marketplace Droom
and online pharmacy PharmEasy have also pulled the plug on their
IPOs. Even fintech major Mobikwik seems to have shelved all plans
to go public for now.
After all, the Indian stock market is doing pretty well. Some indices
have even hit all-time highs and domestic investors continue to pour
money into the market. This kind of environment should be ideal for
an IPO no? Especially when you see other “boring” companies go
public— 35-year-old snack firms, cable manufacturers, NBFCs and
chemical companies. So why are tech companies getting cold feet?
So you could argue that most tech companies felt that they could
extend these inflated valuations to the public markets as well.
But the reality is that the public markets don’t operate the same
way private markets do.
Private investors are okay with playing the long game. They’re
happy if a company delivers on revenue growth and adds new users.
They’re hoping companies can create categories of their own and
they aren’t too focused on the bottom line.
But public markets want to see one thing — profits. And they want to
see it every quarter, trending upwards. So you can imagine that
start-ups burning boatloads of cash won’t make them too happy.
But they’ve had no such luck. Most of them are trading at 50%
below the price at which they first listed on the stock exchanges.
And it finally looks like the ‘new-age’ companies have woken up and
smelt the coffee. It doesn’t matter that the Sensex and Nifty are
doing fairly well. Tech companies aren’t in favour. And they probably
won’t be until they show profits. That’s why many of them have
resorted to layoffs as well. They’re trying to cut costs as quickly as
possible.
Even bankers could be hesitant to support tech IPOs at exorbitant
valuations.
Market regulator SEBI has been watching all this with a hawk’s eye.
They’ve seen the exorbitant valuations.
But in 2022, the average has jumped by 50%!!! Companies are now
having to wait for 115 days to know their fate. The last time the
regulator took so long to clear IPOs was way back in 2014.
Put all this together and you can see why ‘new-age’ companies are
being ultra-cautious now. They don’t want a bad rep. And they don’t
want to get on the wrong side of SEBI. They’d much rather wait and
weather the storm.
You see, an IPO is the holy grail for any company. It’s a sign that the
company is a legitimate enterprise that’s serious about making a
mark in the world. For ‘new-age companies’, going public is
validation. A sign that they’ve made it. They may not have
necessarily needed the money.
And in case they did, well, they could always turn to the private
markets again. Raise money from PEs and VCs — as boAt did by
raising ₹500 crores.
So yeah, there’s money for now. And it could be just a temporary lull
for ‘new-age’ tech IPOs. They’ll be back. When? We don’t know yet.