India food delivery giant Zomato kicks off $1.3bn IPO

India food delivery giant Zomato kicks off $1.3bn IPO

MUMBAI: Food delivery giant Zomato yesterday launched its much-anticipated IPO to raise 93.75 billion rupees ($1.3 billion), India's biggest this year and the first of a series of public listings by tech unicorns. Zomato-which counts subsidiaries of Uber and Jack Ma's Ant Group among its existing shareholders-is one of the country's hottest tech start-ups and dominates India's booming app-based food-delivery space alongside rival Swiggy. Fresh shares priced at between 72 and 76 rupees were issued as part of the initial public offering, which closes on Friday.

Ahead of the IPO, Zomato raised over 41.96 billion rupees ($560 million) from 186 marquee institutional investors, including global investment funds like Blackrock, Fidelity, JPMorgan and Morgan Stanley. As of 2 pm local time (0830 GMT), 10 percent of shares reserved for retail investors were subscribed more than two times so far. But there was lackluster interest in the early hours of bidding for the remaining shares allocated to institutional and high-value investors.

In total, institutional investors have nearly 75 percent of the IPO reserved for them. There are high expectations about the growth of the food delivery market in the country of 1.3 billion people and Zomato and Swiggy's delivery riders are ubiquitous in Indian