Paytm CEO's Fixation On provide A Record IPO Led To A First-Day Flop

  • Nov. 19, 2021, 11:35 a.m.

Vijay Shekhar Sharma wiped away tears of pleasure as he stated his rise from a "commoner" to the leader of a virtual payments large that just finished India's largest-ever preliminary public imparting.
"The desires of a younger usa are with me," stated the founder and leader govt officer of One ninety seven Communications Ltd., operator of the Paytm carrier, earlier than striking the hole gong on the Bombay Stock Exchange at 10 a.M. Neighborhood time on Thursday.

By eleven a.M., Sharma's long-predicted popping out celebration had become one of the worst starting days for a blockbuster tech list for the reason that dot-com bubble. The stock's 27% plunge surprised even a few Paytm pessimists, casting doubt on a report-breaking run for Indian equities and leaving Sharma -- and his underwriters -- to stand hard questions about what went incorrect with the $2.5 billion fundraising.

The short solution is that Sharma's grand ambition to make Paytm's IPO the u . S .'s biggest-ever backfired. The founder had made no mystery of the fact that he wanted his business enterprise's debut to surpass the lengthy-standing IPO document set by way of Coal India Ltd. In 2010. Indeed, there might be symbolism in a startup that approaches bills in bits eclipsing the nation-run mining giant. 

Instead, Paytm now seems a instance of stunning overreach. The business enterprise, with support from leading banks like Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs Group Inc., pushed up both the rate and the size of the inventory presenting to the breaking point. Retail buyers who piled into the providing are actually sitting on heavy losses, in conjunction with worldwide giants like BlackRock Inc. And the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board.

"There has been a euphoria around IPOs in India, supported through the bull-run in stocks and those got carried away via it," stated Nikhil Kamath, co-founding father of Zerodha Broking Ltd., the country's largest brokerage. "For Paytm, the runway for his or her profitability is just too long and would not justify the some distance-fetched pricing."

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Of path, Sharma sees matters otherwise. 

"I've never felt greater excited, constructive and captivated with the future," the 43-12 months-vintage said in an interview simply as Paytm stocks sank on Thursday. The droop is "no indicator of the fee of our employer."

Indeed, the organisation he started with a $a hundred,000 mortgage two decades ago now has billions of dollars in cash to fund its goals of serving one thousand million clients in one of the most promising markets in the international. Sharma, who owns 12% of the corporation after promoting stocks inside the IPO, has a internet well worth of $2.5 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

"We are in it for the lengthy haul," Sharma stated. "We'll positioned our heads down and execute."

Rocky IPOs aren't usually indicators of the future. Facebook, recently renamed Meta Platforms Inc., misplaced greater than half of its price within the months after its 2012 list in New York. IPO buyers who caught with the employer at the moment are sitting on gains of almost 800%.

Sharma's private adventure has run in sync with the upward thrust of the cell internet and the pass from function phones to smartphones. The son of a faculty trainer, he grew up in a city in Aligarh, in important India, and studied engineering in New Delhi, in which he taught himself English by way of being attentive to rock music and reading textual content books with their Hindi translations. 

He founded One ninety seven in 2000 as a text-based human beings-seek service -- 197 is India's hotline for telephone inquiries. The enterprise quickly started out presenting cricket scores, Bollywood news and horoscopes via textual content messages to characteristic phones.

Paytm, whose name rhymes with ATM and is shorthand for Pay Through Mobile, started in 2011 typically to assist users add credit to their pay as you go telephones before it started to perform a digital wallet carrier in 2014. Its bills carrier truely took off in 2016, when India's government invalidated maximum of the us of a's financial institution notes so that it will cast off illegal transactions.

Now, Paytm has 337 million customers relying on it for monetary and e-commerce transactions. It presents virtual loans, insurance, wealth management and stockbroking services in a country with an underneath-evolved banking community. Earlier this week, the company began providing voice buying and selling, leveraging artificial intelligence to permit customers to shop for and sell shares with voice commands.


"India is the most important and great fintech opportunity within the international," Sharma stated in an interview ahead of the list. "If 2010 become the begin of an epochal decade for Chinese marketers constructing global tech businesses, 2021 might be the start of a similar decade for Indian tech startups." 

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Paytm, the Indian digital payments pioneer sponsored via SoftBank Group Corp., is in search of popularity of a $2.2 billion initial public presenting that could be India's largest.

Critics questioned Paytm's potential to stay as much as such lofty promises even earlier than the final IPO pricing. While sales at its core bills and economic-offerings arm rose eleven% in the yr led to March, usual sales dropped 10% amid intensifying opposition, the corporation reported in July. 

Paytm appears to run on "hyperbolic forecasts from its founder and top control" which can be off with the aid of a element of 3 or 4, Aswath Damodaran, a professor of finance at New York University's Stern School of Business wrote on BloombergQuint this month. "Access to capital from its deep pocketed traders, specially Alibaba, appears to have made this organisation casual approximately its business version and profitability, even through younger, tech business enterprise standards."

Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. And its Ant Group Co. Associate have been among One ninety seven's early buyers, together with Japan's SoftBank Group Corp.

Paytm and its backers then stretched its valuation throughout the IPO system, underestimating the significance of solid call for from retail and institutions, in keeping with bankers familiar with the problem. It priced shares at 2,150 rupees a piece, at the pinnacle give up of its range. In an early sign of problem, the IPO wasn't completely subscribed the primary days that shares were offered -- a rarity for deals in red-warm India. 

Paytm failed to go away sufficient cash at the table to give investors an incentive to buy in, a lesson for the future, said one of the bankers at the deal, asking no longer to be named due to the fact the information are private. Now, Paytm will face area-by way of-sector adventure to prove its potentialities to buyers and it should goal turning worthwhile in the subsequent 12 to 18 months, the banker stated.

Underwriters Morgan Stanley, Axis Capital Holdings Ltd. And HDFC Bank Ltd. Did not right away respond to emails in search of remark. Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase & Co., Citigroup Inc. And ICICI Securities Ltd. Declined to remark.


Indians took to social media to voice their frustration -- and schadenfreude. One 4-picture montage used again and again confirmed a man going from euphoria to despair with the words, "When U get IPO allocated after a long term, however its Paytm.."

There is skepticism that Paytm can recover fast. Ahead of the list, Macquarie Capital Securities (India) Pvt. Ltd. Posted a report, starting up insurance on the organisation with an "underperform" score and a fee target of 1,two hundred rupees, 44% decrease than the difficulty rate. It termed Paytm a "cash burning machine" with its payments enterprise a "loss chief."

"Considering Paytm's closely coins-burning business version, no clear course to profitability, massive regulatory risks to the enterprise and questionable corporate governance, we trust the business enterprise is overrated at the top quit of charge band of two,one hundred fifty rupees," analysts Suresh Ganapathy and Param Subramanian wrote within the note.

The agency's task can be to construct scale with profitability. According to Macquarie, the patron and loan distribution, at great, is best a more or less $350 million opportunity.

"Paytm has to lend, i.E., use its own stability sheet to make loans and do that profitably for which it desires a banking license, credit score underwriting enjoy and collection infrastructure, all of which can be lacking at gift," the be aware stated.

Author : Rajdhani Delhi Representative

Rajdhani delhi representative

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