The Abu Dhabi Investment Authority and University of Cambridge are among dozens of successful bidders for the 82.5 billion rupees ($1.1bn) of stock that digital payments company Paytm is selling to anchor investors in its initial public offering.
BlackRock Inc., Canada Pension Plan Investment Board and Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund got some of the largest allocations, Paytm said in an exchange filing. The Teacher Retirement System of Texas, City of New York Group Trust and University of Texas System are buying shares in Paytm’s anchor tranche as well.
Paytm received orders for more than ten times the amount of stock on offer, people with knowledge of the matter said earlier. It is also selling shares to funds managed by Abrdn Plc, Citadel, Fidelity, Janus Henderson Group Plc, Marshall Wace, Mirae Asset, Nomura Holdings Inc., Schroders Plc and UBS Group AG, according to the filing.
The company, formally known as One97 Communications Ltd., is selling nearly half of its 183bn-rupee IPO to the anchor investors. The anchor book is India’s largest ever so far – in keeping with Paytm’s status as the country’s biggest public market debut so far.
Paytm, whose name rhymes with ATM, was founded in 2010 by Vijay Shekhar Sharma. Four years later, it moved into digital payments and more recently has expanded into banking, credit cards, wealth management and all kinds of services ranging from selling digital gold, insurance and movie tickets.
It has over 337 million registered users and nearly 22 million merchants on its platform, according to previous company announcements.
The roaring pace of the nation’s stock market indices this year have spurred multiple technology unicorns to list on the stock exchanges, offering investors a chance to partake in high-profile technology start-up names from food delivery start-up Zomato, which made its stock market debut in July to Nykaa, which is scheduled to list next week.
Paytm’s IPO will be priced in the range of 2,080 rupees to 2,150 rupees-a-share. Large investors such as Jack Ma’s Ant Group Co and Masayoshi Son’s SoftBank Group Corp are selling shares. The IPO opens next week, running from November 8 to November 10, and the shares are expected to list in mid-November.
Paytm has built the biggest share of India’s merchant payments market by fending off stiff competition from a number of global players including Walmart Inc.-owned PhonePe, Alphabet Inc.’s Google Pay, Amazon Pay as well as Facebook Inc.-owned WhatsApp Pay.
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