Affle (India) Ltd, the local arm of Singapore-based mobile solutions company Affle Holdings Pte. Ltd, made a strong debut on the stock exchanges on Thursday with its shares listing at a 25% premium to the issue price and then climbing higher.
The shares listed on the BSE at Rs 929.90 apiece, up from the issue price of Rs 745, stock-exchange data showed. The shares touched a high of Rs 958.30 but later pared the gains on profit-taking to end the day 17.5% higher at Rs 875.10 apiece.
The benchmark BSE Sensex jumped 1.74% on reports that the government may roll back the tax hike for foreign portfolio investors and offer some other incentives.
The spectacular debut comes after the company's initial public offering received an astounding response with high demand across investor categories. The IPO of 3.37 million shares — excluding the anchor allotment — was subscribed 86.5 times. This was the best investor turnout in an IPO in more than one-and-a-half years.
Affle India is the first multinational company to float an IPO in India in over 12 years. Credit rating firm ICRA Ltd was the last Indian company with a multinational parent to go public, in March 2007.
The Affle IPO comprised a fresh sale of shares worth Rs 90 core and a sale of about 4.95 million shares by Affle Holdings. The total IPO size is now Rs 459 crore.
The parent company, which is itself backed by Microsoft and Times Internet Ltd, had previously planned to divest 5.5 million shares at the time of filing the IPO documents in July last year. After the IPO, promoter holding in Affle India will drop to 68.4% from 92.17%.
The company was founded in 2006 by Anuj Khanna Sohum and Anuj Kumar. It offers a mobile-audience-as-a-service platform to help commerce and marketing companies promote their mobile programmes. It also offers a fraud-analytics-as-a-service platform to detect and prevent mobile advertising fraud.
Affle operates through seven offices worldwide having over 236 employees as on May 2019. Besides Singapore, the company has offices in Gurugram, Mumbai, Jakarta and Kuala Lumpur.
