WestBridge Capital Divests 14.6 Lakh IndiaMART Shares For INR 380 Cr

Investment firm WestBridge Capital on Friday (June 20) offloaded 14.6 Lakh shares in B2B marketplace IndiaMART InterMESH for INR 379.7 Cr via open market transactions. 

WestBridge Capital sold the shares via three separate bulk deals at INR 2,601 apiece, a discount of 1.8% to the stock’s last close on Friday. IndiaMART shares closed 1.25% higher at INR 2,648.80 on the BSE on June 21. 

While SBI Mutual Fund picked up 10.8 Lakh shares for a total of INR 280.9 Cr, Morgan Stanley Asia (Singapore) PTE purchased 1.9 Lakh shares for nearly INR 50 Cr. Both of them lapped up the stocks at INR 2,601 apiece. There was no clarity on who purchased the remaining 1.9 Lakh shares.

The bulk deals came on the same day as IndiaMART announced that it received the approval of its shareholders for the reappointment of Dinesh Agarwal as the managing director and CEO of the company for another five years. Agarwal will be at the helm of the B2B marketplace till January 7, 2030. 

Interestingly, the company is in the middle of a top deck reshuffle. The startup’s shareholders recently approved the proposal to reappoint Brijesh Kumar Agarwal as the director of IndiaMART till January 7, 2027. It appointed Jitin Diwan as its new chief financial officer (CFO) last week while CEO Prateek Chandra transitioned into a new role within the company as chief strategy officer.

Founded in 1996 by Agarwal, IndiaMART connects buyers with suppliers. It enables sellers to list on the platforms and earns revenues from leads, business enquiries and services offered to its clients. 

The B2B marketplace posted a 78% year-on-year (YoY) surge in its consolidated net profit to INR 99.6 Cr in the fourth quarter (Q4) of the financial year 2023-24 (FY24) compared to INR 55.8 Cr in the year-ago period. Meanwhile, revenue from operations also jumped 17% to INR 314.7 Cr during the period under review as against INR 268.8 Cr in Q4 FY23. 

What is, however, interesting is that domestic brokerage firm Nuvama Institutional Equities recently slashed its 12-month price target on IndiaMART to INR 2,650 from INR 2,800 earlier owing to the company’s subdued subscriber addition rate.

It is also pertinent to note that IndiaMART acquired a 10% stake in fraud detection startup Baldor Technologies for INR 89.7 Cr via a secondary transaction last month. 

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