New-Age Tech Stocks Come Under Selling Pressure; Fino Payments Only Gainer This Week

Indian new-age tech stocks witnessed a bloodbath this week amid a slump in the IT stocks in the broader market.

Eighteen out of the 19 new-age tech stocks under Inc42’s coverage fell this week in a range of 1% to over 17%. Fino Payments Bank was the only gainer this week, rallying 5.6% to end the week at INR 326.6 on the BSE.

Meanwhile, Yudiz emerged as the biggest loser this week by falling 17.45%, followed by DroneAcharya (down 10.5%) and Nazara Technologies (down almost 10%).

ideaForge and CarTrade Technologies fell over 8% each during the week, Mamaearth and Zaggle lost over 6%, while Tracxn Technologies, Zomato, RateGain, and MapmyIndia declined over 4% each.

Though the IT stocks were under pressure this week, the benchmark indices closed the week at record highs despite witnessing a range-bound movement. While Nifty50 closed at 22,493.55, Sensex ended the week at 74,119.39.

Speaking on the market performance this week, Vinod Nair, head of research at Geojit Financial Services, said that the expectations of a rate cut by the Fed and declining bond yields prompted investors to shift to equities, which bolstered the market. The improved macroeconomic narrative helped banking stocks, while the extension of the FAME-II scheme partially led to heavy buying in auto stocks this week.

However, uncertainties in the global market led to weakness in the IT sector, he said.

“The release of US payroll data, and upcoming inflation data from the US, China, and India next week will provide investors with insights into the global macroeconomic outlook. We expect volatility to persist in the upcoming week due to high valuations and forthcoming policy rate guidance releases,” Nair added.

This week had only four trading sessions as the exchanges were shut on Friday on the occasion of Mahashivratri.

Now, let’s deep dive into the performance of some of the new-age tech stocks this week.

The total market capitalisation of the 19 new-age tech stocks under Inc42’s coverage stood at $44.64 Bn at the end of this week as against $55.49 Bn last week.

Paytm Allots ESOPs

While the fintech major continues to remain under pressure due to the uncertainties created by the RBI’s regulatory action on Paytm Payments Bank, Paytm’s parent One97 Communications announced fresh ESOP allotment this week.

In an exchange filing on Tuesday (March 5), the company said its board approved allotment of 2.66 Lakh equity shares to eligible employees.

While the stock was already volatile, it declined further in the sessions after the announcement.

Meanwhile, RBI governor Shaktikanta Das said this week that the restrictions imposed on Paytm Payments Bank won’t have an impact on almost 80-85% of Paytm users. However, there remains a challenge in migrating 10-15% of the payment bank users to other banks, he added.

Overall, shares of Paytm slipped 3.3% during the week. However, the shares gained a little more than 2% in Thursday’s trading session, ending the week at INR 401.05 on the BSE.

Despite the regulatory hurdles, Paytm boss Vijay Shekhar Sharma expressed his confidence about making a strong comeback. Speaking at a financial technology conference in Tokyo earlier this week, he said, “Make Paytm an Asia leader — in my lifetime, I would like to do that.” 

Meanwhile, analysts expect Paytm to continue to remain volatile in the coming weeks.

Antfin Offloads 2% Stake In Zomato

Chinese tech major Ant Group’s arm Antfin Singapore offloaded Zomato shares worth INR 2,827 Cr in two bulk deals this week.

Antfin sold 9.7 Cr shares of the foodtech major in a deal, offloading a 1.1% stake. It sold an additional 7.93 Cr shares via another deal. 

Antfin owned over 55 Cr shares of Zomato at the end of the quarter ended December 2023. Following the stake sale this week, it is now expected to hold 37.4 Cr shares in the company.

Meanwhile, Morgan Stanley Asia lapped up 5.7 Cr shares of the footech giant.

Following Antfin’s stake sale, shares of Zomato slumped in the next two trading sessions. After reaching a record high of INR 175.5 on the BSE last week, the stock fell 4.6% this week to close at INR 159.95 on Thursday. 

The stock has been seeing a bull run since the beginning of February, gaining almost 14% in just one month.

March Capital Offloads CarTrade Shares

CarTrade Tech’s pre-IPO shareholder March Capital offloaded almost 9.5 Lakh shares in bulk deals worth over INR 70 Cr this week.

March Capital holds stake in CarTrade via MCP3 SPV and Springfield Venture International. Springfield sold 6.32 Lakh shares of CarTrade shares, or a 1.35% stake, while MCP3 SPV offloaded 3.16 Lakh shares, or a 0.67% stake.

Shares of CarTrade, which rose sharply in the previous weeks, fell in all four trading sessions this week. The stock crashed almost 8.1% this week and closed at INR 719.1 on the BSE.

It came under significant selling pressure despite ICICI Prudential Mutual Fund and ICICI Prudential Asset Management Company buying some of the shares offloaded by March Capital. 

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