After Nykaa’s successful IPO, FirstCry, a company focused on selling items for kids and moms online and in stores, is getting ready for its own public offering. Based in Pune, they had to delay their IPO plans last year because of some problems in the market. Now, they’re looking to file their IPO paperwork soon.
FirstCry aims to raise a lot of money, around US $500-600 million (which is about Rs. 4,900 crore) next year. They hope to be valued at US $4-5 billion (around Rs. 40,000 crore). They plan to submit their Draft Red Herring Prospectus (DRHP) to market authorities Sebi before December 29. The company might go public after the general elections, according to someone who knows about this but wanted to keep it private.
Earlier this year, three family offices from big Indian companies bought some shares in FirstCry for about Rs. 435 crore to support the company before its IPO. These offices belong to Ranjan Pai from Manipal Group, Harsh Mariwala from Marico, and Hemendra Kothari’s DSP family office. They bought these shares from SoftBank, which is the biggest investor in FirstCry.
FirstCry needs to follow India’s rules about foreign investments in e-commerce, which means they can’t have more than 51 percent of their investment coming from outside the country. SoftBank is trying to lower its ownership to less than 26 percent so that it doesn’t have too much control over the company according to the country’s rules.
