Affle India IPO opens for subscription: all you need to know
The Affle India IPO closes on Wednesday. The capital raised through the fresh issue will be used for financing working capital requirements and corporate purposes.
Mobile marketing startup Affle India’s Rs 459 crore IPO opened for subscription on Monday. The price band for the Affle India IPO has been set at Rs 740-745 per share. The issue will close on July 31, 2019.
Affle was set up in April 2005 with an SMS-based marketing solution when 3G didn’t exist, PDAs (personal digital assistants) devices were all the rage, and the smartest phone around was the Blackberry. Even back then, Founders Anuj Khanna Sohum and Anuj Kumar were convinced consumers would be spending a lot of time on their mobile phones.
The Affle India IPO comprises a fresh issue aggregating up to Rs 90 crore (20 percent of the issue size) and an offer for sale of up to 49,53,020 equity shares for Rs 367-369 crore by the company’s promoter Affle Holdings Pvt Ltd. The minimum lot size for applying for the shares is 20.
The capital raised through the fresh issue will be used for financing working capital requirements and general corporate purposes. The Affle India shares will be listed on both the bourses: NSE and BSE.
On Friday, Affle India said it had raised around Rs 206.55 crore from 15 anchor investors by allotting 27,72,483 equity shares at a price of Rs 745. Abeerden Asian Smaller Companies Investment and Franklin Templeton Investment Funds are among the 15 investors who subscribed over 3.05 lakh shares each. Other anchor investors include entities such as Goldman Sachs India and Malabar India Fund.
In fact, Malabar MD Sumeet Nagar has gone on record as saying that Affle was the biggest adtech player in India, and a profitable one at that.
According to Sumeet, “As transactions on mobile apps keep getting more traction and become mainstream, we believe that the demand for Affle’s user acquisition and retention solutions should grow manifold. The management’s focus on profitability has created a combination of sustainable high growth, margins and cashflow generation...As the screen of a smartphone becomes one of the most desired real estates on earth, we expect Affle’s offerings to create significant value for advertisers and investors alike.”
For the fiscal year 2018-19 Affle reported a revenue of Rs 269 crore and a profit after tax (PAT) of Rs 52 crore, on a consolidated basis.
The consumer intelligence company has its main operations in Singapore and Gurugram. Affle Holdings, the Singapore-based parent firm, counts Microsoft, Itochu, Centurion Investment Management, Times Internet, and D2C (a subsidiary of telecom major NTT DOCOMO) among its investors.
ICICI Securities, Nomura Financial Advisory and Securities (India) are the book-running lead managers to the offer.
(Edited by Teja Lele Desai)
