New Delhi-based online travel company Easy Trip Planners Ltd, which operates one of the largest India travel portals by gross booking revenue, EaseMyTrip, has filed a draft prospectus with the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) for an initial public offering (IPO).
The size of the IPO, which is a sale of shares by promoters Nishant Pitti and Rikant Pittie, is pegged at Rs 510 crore ($72 million at current exchange rate). The brothers will each sell shares worth Rs 255 crore, according to the prospectus.
Easy Trip Planners will become the first Indian travel company to list on Indian bourses and will join a handful of internet companies that have recently gone public.
Venture capital-backed Matrimony.com, which owns BharatMatrimony, went public in September 2017. Online business-to-business (B2B) marketplace IndiaMART InterMESH Ltd went public in July this year.
MakeMyTrip, India’s largest online travel company, listed on the Nasdaq in early 2013.
Besides Nishant Pitti and Rikant Pittie, EasyTrip’s third co-founder is Prashant Pitti, an IIT Madras alumnus who founded NearGroup in 2016. NearGroup is one of the 12 companies selected by Boost VC, an accelerator based in San Mateo that invests in blockchain and virtual reality startups.
Here’s a snapshot of the proposed IPO of EasyTrip:
Use of proceeds:
The company will not directly receive any proceeds from the IPO. The proceeds from the sale of shares will go to the promoter selling shareholders.
Bankers
Axis Capital and JM Financial are the merchant bankers arranging and managing the IPO.
Lawyers
AZB & Partners is the legal counsel to the company. Khaitan & Co and Squire Patton Boggs (MEA) LLP are India and international legal counsel to the merchant bankers.
Company
Incorporated in 2008, the company started operations as a business-to-business-to-consumer (B2B2C) operator. It commenced B2C distribution operations in 2011 to cater to the growing Indian middle class population’s travel requirements. In 2013, it entered the business-to-employee segment.
The company offers a range of travel-related products and services including airline, rail and bus tickets, hotels and holiday packages, travel insurance, visa processing, and tickets for activities and attractions.
The company claims it has been profitable since incorporation. The company accounted for 3.8% market share of gross bookings in India’s online travel industry.
As on November 2019, the company provided its clients tickets for more than 400 international and domestic airlines, 1.09 million Indian and overseas hotels, almost all the railway stations in India as well as bus tickets to and taxi rentals for major cities in India. It is affiliated with over 52,752 travel agents across major Indian cities as on September 2019.
Financials
The company reported a net profit of Rs 19.93 crore for the six months ended September 2019 on revenue (from operations) of Rs 66.48 crore.
Its full fiscal year 2018-19 net profit was Rs 23.99 crore on revenue of Rs 101.10 crore.
