Messaging and voice application programming interface company Route Mobile Ltd has received regulatory approval to float an initial public offering (IPO).
Capital market regulator Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) issued final observations to Route Mobile’s refiled IPO proposal on 24 December, according to information published on its website.
This makes Route Mobile the 28th company to receive regulatory clearance this year for an IPO. SEBI had cleared 72 IPO proposals last year and 46 in 2017.
The Mumbai-based company had refiled its IPO on 30 September.
The offer comprises fresh shares worth Rs 240 crore and shares worth Rs 360 crore of promoters Sandipkumar Gupta and Rajdipkumar Gupta.
The company will use Rs 36.9 crore towards repayment and advance payment of certain borrowings, Rs 83 crore for acquisitions and other strategic initiatives, Rs 65 crore for the purchase of office premises, and an undisclosed amount for general corporate purposes.
VCCircle was the first to report about the company’s IPO plans in early 2018.
The company had filed its IPO plan in January 2018 and received a green signal in August 2018.
A listing will make Route Mobile the second company in the mobile communication services segment to go public.
Singapore-based Affle Holdings Pte. Ltd, which provides mobile commerce and marketing solutions for consumers and businesses, went public two months ago.
In December 2010, One97 Communications Ltd, the parent of e-payments and e-commerce firm Paytm, had filed a draft prospectus with SEBI for an IPO but shelved its plans citing volatile market conditions.
ICICI Securities, Axis Capital, Edelweiss Financial Services, and IDBI Capital Markets & Securities are merchant bankers managing Route Mobile’s IPO.
Route Mobile, formerly RouteSms Solutions Ltd, was founded in 2004, with offices in Mumbai, Pune and London. Today, it also has offices in Canada (Toronto), Congo, Nigeria (Lagos), and the UAE, besides Hyderabad and New Delhi. It employs close to 300 people.
Route Mobile caters to the requirements of the mobile communications industry, offering solutions and services to mobile network operators, enterprises, over-the-top content firms, SMS aggregators and resellers.
Its solutions include an SMS firewall, which monitors and controls large quantities of SMSes sent to one or multiple destinations. The company also monitors the content of SMSes and filters messages based on defined keywords, rules, subscriber identity and locations to prevent spoofing.
Route Mobile counts among its clients ICICI Bank, State Bank of India, Skype, Emirates Airlines, Bank of Maharashtra, WeChat, OSN and Viber. The company claims to route more than two billion messages per month over its proprietary technology, according to information on its website.
The firm had acquired Mumbai-based Cellent Technologies in July 2016.
Cellent Technologies, which was part of the Goel Group and has a presence in the application-to-person messaging markets of West Asia and Africa, was Route Mobile’s first acquisition.
After that, Route Mobile acquired Defero Mobile and Call2Connect, before buying Malta-based SMS firewall solutions company 365squared.