Snapdeal, the Indian ecommerce marketplace which saw a resurgence over the past few years after being outed by Flipkart and Amazon in early years, has decided to shelve its planned $152 Million IPO. The company confirmed the same to Reuters. This comes at a time when most Indian tech startup stocks are feeling the economic meltdown, much more than others.
Current slowdown in tech stocks globally, has severely impacted listed Indian tech stocks as well. Paytm recently touched its lowest share price, having seen nearly 75% of its $13Bn valuation being wiped off. The case has been similar with the likes of Zomato, PolicyBazaar among others, even though their declines have been more subtle.
For Snapdeal, it filed its initial public offering (IPO) regulatory papers at just the right time — back in December 2021 — when money was flowing like anything into Indian startups. But Snapdeal is now among many others, who are delaying IPOs amid a stock market rout that has raised concerns over frothy tech valuations.
Snapdeal filed a request with Indian stock market regulator SEBI this week, for withdrawing its IPO prospectus.
“There is no appetite for tech stocks right now,” said a source to Reuters, who added that SEBI has been told about the prevailing market conditions and certain other strategic decisions that contributed to the change in IPO plans.
Already listed tech firms, such as Paytm, Zomato, PolicyBazaar among others, have already seen major shareholders selling their portion of shares in bulk. Investors almost immediately loaded off their portion, as soon as the post-IPO lockin period ended. Alibaba sold off $200Mn worth of Zomato stock, absorbing significant loss, while Softbank, which has made several high-profile loss-making bets in India, sold bulk of its PolicyBazaar holdings.
