Private equity and venture capital-backed firms Indegene, a pharma player and skincare brand Mamaearth’s parent Honasa Consumer have received approval from Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) for their respective initial public offerings.
Both companies had filed preliminary papers with the market regulator in December 2022, with an aim to raise primary and secondary capital through their public offering.
The approval comes at a time when the domestic market has responded strongly to a few companies that went public in the last few months.
Bengaluru-based Indegene Ltd, which offers solutions that help enable biopharmaceutical, emerging biotech and medical devices companies to develop products, is planning to raise around Rs 950 crore through a fresh issue.
In its offer for sale proposed earlier, which involved a sale of 36.3 million shares, US private equity giants Carlyle and Brighton Park Capital along with the Nadathur Family Office, were planning to make a partial exit.
However, Carlyle trimmed its stake a few months back, selling part of its shares to Avendus Future Leaders Fund, as reported earlier.
Indegene was founded in 1998 by five, first-generation entrepreneurs Manish Gupta, Sanjay Parikh, Rajesh Nair, Gaurav Kapoor and Anand Kiran.
Nadathur Group (through Nadathur Fareast Pte. Ltd. and Vida Trustees Private Limited) holds 27.93% in Indegene.
In 2021, Carlyle and Brighton Park Capital acquired a minority stake in the company for $200 million. Carlyle owns a 20.79% stake in the company and Brighton Park holds 12.27% stake. Carlyle plans to sell 37% of its holding, while Brighton will sell about 31%.
Honasa Consumer
The parent of direct-to-consumer brands Mamaearth and The Derma Co, Honasa Consumer Pvt. Ltd, was reported looking to raise around Rs 2,900 crore, when it filed its papers. The company, however, had put the plans on hold because of weak market conditions, according to Reuters.
The IPO comprises a fresh issue of Rs 400 crore and an offer-for-sale (OFS) of up to 46.82 million equity shares, according to draft red herring prospectus (DRHP) filed with Sebi.
Investors including Belgium’s Sofina Ventures, Stellaris, Fireside Ventures, and Evolvence, were looking to partially exit through the IPO. The company is also backed by Sequoia, which did not disclose its plans to sell its stake in the DRHP.
Fireside currently holds about 10.4% stake in the firm, Sofina and Stellaris hold about 9.5% and Evolvence around 1.4%.
Co-founder Varun Alagh, who currently holds 34.3% stake in the company planned to dilute about 3% of his holding, while Ghazal Alagh, who holds about 3.2%, aimed to dilute about 1% of her stake.
Investors like Kunal Bahl, Snapdeal co-founder Rohit Bansal, Bollywood actor Shilpa Shetty Kundra, Sharrp Ventures’s Rishabh Mariwala were also looking to dilute their stakes through the IPO.