CarTrade Sets INR 1,618 As Upper Price Band; IPO Opens On August 9

Mumbai-based automobiles marketplace CarTrade Tech, which is heading for an initial public offering later this month, has announced a price band of INR 1,585 – INR 1,618 per equity share. The IPO opens for subscription on Monday, August 9, 2021 and closes on Wednesday, August 11, 2021.

The CarTrade IPO is an offer for sale of up to 18,532,216 equity shares held by CMDB II, Highdell Investment Ltd, Macritchie Investments Pte. Ltd, Springfield Venture International, Daniel Edward Neary, Shree Krishna Trust, Victor Anthony Perry III, Bina Vinod Sanghi, Seena Vinod Sanghi and the company’s founder Vinay Vinod Sanghi. At the upper end of the price band, CarTrade would raise around INR 2,998.15 Cr from the OFS.

Up to 50% of the net offer shall be available for allocation to qualified institutional buyers (QIB), with at least 15% reserved for non-institutional bidders and at least 35% allocated to retail individual bidders. Anchor investors will be invited to subscribe to the company’s shares on Friday, August 06, 2021, a day prior to the IPO opening date.

Last month, CarTrade received an approval from SEBI to raise INR 2,000 Cr through the IPO. The startup had filed its draft red herring prospectus in May this year for a pure offer for sale (OFS) for 1,23,54,811 equity shares of the company. The offer constitutes 26.9% of the company’s post-offer paid-up equity share capital.

Founded in 2009 by Vinay Sanghi, a former chief executive officer of Mahindra First Choice and Rajan Mehra, former country head of eBay, CarTrade is an Indian multi-channel automarket place, offering both new and used vehicle to customers through platforms such as CarTrade, Carwale, CarTradeExchange, Shriram Automall, Adroit Auto, Auto Biz, and  BikeWale. CarTrade group has over 40 OEMs, 15,000+ dealers and has 180 owned or franchise stores.

The company last raised INR 321 Cr in a Series H round, as reported exclusively by Inc42 last June, from HighDell, MacRitchie Investments and others. On a consolidated level, the company reported of INR 281.52 Cr compared to INR 318.44 Cr in FY20. However, its net profits shot up to INR 101.07 Cr, up from INR 31.29 Cr in the previous year, thanks to extensive cost-cutting, particularly in regard to marketing and promotional expenses.

CarTrade’s core business and its various verticals competes against the likes of Cars24, CarDekho, Mahindra First Choice, Droom, Spinny among others. Interestingly, Droom, which entered the unicorn club in late July, is also preparing for an IPO. Droom raised $200 Mn at a valuation of $1.2 Bn and the company said it will finish the year with a net revenue of $65 Mn, up from $54 Mn last year.