MUMBAI: Two major financial sector IPOs are set to enter the market this year, with the bullish sentiment and high earnings multiples of Indian stocks providing private equity investors an opportunity to exit.
Education loan provider Avanse Financial Services has filed a draft prospectus with Sebi for a Rs 3,500-crore IPO, comprising a combination of fresh issue and offer for sale from existing shareholders. Pine Labs, a company that handles digital payments in Asia, plans to raise $1 billion by selling its shares for the first time in India, seeking a $6-billion valuation. The IPO will be a combination of new share sale and a sale by existing investors.
Avanse was originally set up by promoters of home loan company DHFL and was acquired by
Warburg Pincus in 2019 after the collapse of the DHFL group. In April, the company raised Rs 1,000-crore equity from Mubadala Investment and Avendus.
The selling shareholders in Avanse, according to the draft prospectus, are Olive Vine Investment (Warburg), International Finance Corporation, and Kedaara Capital Growth Fund. Meanwhile, Pine Labs is considering a pre-IPO fundraising round. If Pine Labs goes ahead with this $1-billion sale, it would be the biggest first-time sale by an Indian finance and technology company since 2021. Pine Labs had earlier planned an IPO in the US and filed papers with the SEC. However, the company shifted its registration from Singapore to India. In its last funding round, Pine Labs was valued at close to $5.8 billion.
Pine Labs began as a point-of-sale system for merchants but has rapidly expanded into digital payments and the buy-now-pay-later market.