One of the largest online marketplace in India, Snapdeal, plans to launch an IPO in India in five years time.
Speaking to CNBC-TV18, Kunal Bahl, co-founder of Snapdeal mentioned, “We want to make sure we continue to be a company that is based in India and domiciled in India and hopefully goes public in India,” he says.
However, the IPO is not something that Snapdeal is looking for in near future. Kunal added, “I think five years or less will be the time to go IPO way. But it’s not my sole decision, it will be a decision for our board to make.”
Snapdeal reasoned that it needs to build necessary infrastructure and capability to be a private company and plan relatively longer term vision for investments.
Kunal further added, “The moment you become a public company, we have to start managing quarters and sometimes end up being short sighted in our investment cycles,”
Snapdeal’s rival, Flipkart, had also announced in January this year that it plans to raise $5Bn through IPO in the US bourses over a span of 18 months. However, the company seems to have put a hold on its plans at the company officials said that the company is not prepared to face the “scrutiny” that a listed company is subjected to.
Prior in the year, market regulator SEBI planned to ease IPO rules to encourage homegrown tech startups to go public.
A few Indian startups that have been listed so far are JustDial, InfoEdge, Makemytrip and Matrimony.com.
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