IPO

“Most people think year four is when you start preparing for an IPO, but it's actually, you're far, you're much, much further from it. And you're not even halfway there by that point. So are you ready to go on that journey? That's gonna take 1015 plus years, an…”

“In India, Indian companies have historically taken India mark for 20 years for an IPO.”

“And we believe that in most of the cases, while there will be, of course, some IPOs that will happen, but there'll be few and far between. Many companies will find its exit from a trade sale.”

“From a from a company you know, readiness perspective, I think we are, we would be ready as of yesterday also, right, from a, Sai is the fact that we are profitable, but we just don't feel that we need to raise from public markets as we speak because the busin…”

“And in the next two, three years, you will see that accelerate significantly. So I think that bell has been rung, and now you're going to see a long queue of quality companies. And also a lot of groundwork has happened, right, over the last decade. Investors h…”

“We never risked funds, you know, till the time we went for IPO, almost 16, 17 years, you know, we were always cash rich”

“Almost all IPOs come to you when the books have been dressed up already. So the past is not very relevant to it.”

“As far as WebEngage is concerned, Sid will definitely go that path. That's very clear. But I don't think for the next few years we are even thinking about it. A hundred crores while, you know, it sounds a hundred crores, it's a very small number.”

“Viva only ever raised four million in its entire life before going to IPO, right?”

“Salesforce only ever raised sixty-five million right before going to IPO.”

“If you raise primary in the IPO, then you have to use it in the next one to two years, and that is basically monitored also. So, you know, you have to give the use of proceeds initially, you have to use it for those, and you cannot, unlike financing the privat…”

“I think this is the most rigorous part of the IPO. You end up meeting more than 50 investors and eventually hope that between five to seven good investors, they come and work with you.”

“The last part, which in my mind, I would like to call it as consensus building, is the toughest part in an IPO. Because unlike a private round, in a private round, two parties decide on how good is the business model? What's the valuation? What is it that you …”

“You know, one of the common questions that get asked in an IPO is how much time does it take to do an IPO? And the most common answer that you might hear is that it takes anywhere between six to nine months. I think the answer is wrong. It really depends on wh…”

“So we did an IPO. So in November we went out with an IPO. So that was roughly a valuation of a little less than about two billion dollars.”

“Now, as a loss making company go public, you better be sure that you're going to be making a profit in one or two years after you go public. No, I don't think public markets are willing to tolerate losses over five years, seven years further.”

“But I think now the trend is reversing will, where you'll start seeing companies going public when they maybe hit a thousand crores revenue or 15, 1500 crores revenue, et cetera.”

“The company can probably go to IPO in three years and may raise one maximum two rounds.”

“Most founders, when they dilute too much, they become irrelevant and get kicked out of their companies in 10 years, which happened to some of the names that we mentioned, and then they don't get the remaining 40 X because you know, the real juice is when you b…”

“Three years. That's the aim you have set for your team. When we cross a thousand crore run rate. With double digit EBITDA.”

“I tell people that undervalue your stock at IPO. What does it matter? You will lose a little bit. And over time, you don't want to sell only once. You will sell in the IPO. You will sell the rest of what you sell after. So, when you sell, you will get better v…”

“From our interpretation, it feels like companies are able to go out at a smaller top line scale. Than you would see in international markets where it's viable maybe in the hundred to one hundred fifty million top line range instead of what seems to be more lik…”

“I think that's not a too realistic way. Especially when being a B to B company, I see also IPOs being more realistic for B to C companies in general, because you just have put a lot of time in building the brand, which helps you a lot with them. I'm also selli…”

“I think the middle, mid-scale IPOs is still sort of early days that I think we'll see over the next three years, you know, several of those.”

“Between a financial exit of IPO versus M&A, M&A has turned out to be cleaner for me. So most of the exits that I have made were either a secondary sale to the next round of investor Or companies got acquired by other public companies because it's very clean. I…”

“Because if you wanted to do an IPO, there was a Sarkari Babu called the control of capital issues, who would sit behind a desk and decide how much money you can raise from the market, whether you could charge a premium or not, and whether you could raise money…”

“Now, it's becoming more and more interesting, and you're going to be seeing many IPOs coming into India, many very high Earning IPOs and very high cap IPOs, which will provide an opportunity.”

“And therefore, I think once this market correction gets over six months, nine months, 12 months, so many companies have filed, you will see a deluge of IPOs, but in a good way.”

“Because in the preparation for IPO, in order to make the company big, we bring, like, a lot of these new leaders. Most of them turn out to be mercenaries, not missionaries, and it's amazing how many of them are worried about stock price on a day-to-day basis.”

“Actually, IPOs do most collateral damage to companies, you know, because you bring a lot of CXOs. No, actually, not don't take company public, I think, be confident to take a company public, and while retaining a lot of your founding leadership. With your ex…”

“Europe and also Switzerland is not very well known to do IPOs with startups. Pretty much all deals are either with buyout funds or private equity or M&A deals.”

“And another thesis was how you go early with startups. And you are also taking some chips off the table until they go IPO or, you know, wherever they go, which obviously is a good idea in my opinion, because with the Chad GPT era, the risk is massive, even for…”

“I think what we're going to see more of is acquisitions by private equity firms and other startups, mergers, and of course, strategics being a form of liquidity versus just the IPO.”

“We knew that IPO is not possible in this market, right? So acquisition is unfortunately the only like credible, big exit path in MarTech.”