In what apparently looks like a BharatPe vs Paytm war, founder Ashneer Grover has officially criticised Vijay Shekhar Sharma. To Sharma’s decision to “misprice” the fintech firm’s public offering, Grover said that this failed listing thus ends the frenzied cycle of IPOs in India.
Paytm’s stocks continue to tank, following a debacle at the Bombay Stock Exchange. It saw the worst performance in recent history with share price going down 27 percent to Rs 1,560 from the issue price of Rs 2,150 apiece.
Grover, whose firm recently got a small finance bank licence, said Paytm gave Chinese investors their money back at the cost of the public market.
BharatPe also became a unicorn earlier this year.
“I used to tell investors that there’s going to be two markets — pre-Paytm and post-Paytm because post Paytm is going to tank and that is exactly what has happened. The reason is quite simple, you have mispriced your IPO,” Grover said.
“You did an Rs 18,300 crore IPO out of which 55 percent was secondary. You did a price optimization. It’s the Chinese investors who sold their shares through this IPO. You disrupted the Indian market to return Chinese investors’ money,” he added.
Grover further added to this saying that this development is likely to have a huge impact on the upcoming IPOs including that of LIC in India.
LIC is expected to file the draft prospectus in the next two weeks in what is touted to be the country’s largest public listing.
“All the upcoming IPOs are now likely to be repriced including that of LIC which was supposed to be the biggest so far. The government had to divest. If it gets to lower price then the government will face issues as their target of disinvestment will not be met,” he said.
