Zomato

With IPO share sale lock in periods ending for India’s listed tech startups, we are now seeing a trend of pre-IPO private investors offloading bulk of their shares, even if that comes at a massive discount to their original investment. After Paytm saw a massive bulk offloading by its largest pre-IPO shareholder SoftBank, its now Zomato, where Alibaba is expected to sell off nearly $200Mn worth of shares at a 5-6% discount.

According to a report from Mint, the Chinese e-commerce behemoth, through its entity Alipay Singapore Pte Ltd, aims to sell 262.9 million shares representing 3.07% stake in the company. It is offering the shares to institutional investors at a floor price of 60 apiece, a 5.59% discount to the last closing price, fetching 1,580 crore at the floor price.

For Zomato, this isn’t the first of such block deals. Earlier this year, both Uber and Tiger Global — two of its largest shareholders, also offloaded bulk of their shares as the 12 months post IPO lock in period ended. Uber offloaded it’s entire stake of 7.8%, getting nearly $400 Mn in return. This, after it assumed an unrealized loss of $707 million on its Zomato investment in the first half of this year and the quarter that ended in June 30, 2022.

Post Alibaba’s block deal execution, the Chinese e-commerce major would still own about 10% in Zomato.