Leading Indian online travel firm Yatra Online Inc, which is listed on the Nasdaq, announced on March 25 that its Indian subsidiary, Yatra Online Limited, filed a Draft Red Herring Prospectus ("DRHP") with the market regulator Sebi for an initial public offering (IPO) aggregating up to Rs 7,500 million or approximately US$100 million of primary proceeds and a secondary offering of up to 8,896,998 equity shares by THCL Travel Holding Cyprus Limited, a subsidiary of Yatra Online, Inc., which amounts to approximately 8% of the shares outstanding of Yatra Online Limited.
Yatra Online was listed on the US bourses in December 2016.
"Over the last 15 years, we have grown our business to become one of India's leading online travel agencies," said Dhruv Shringi, Chief Executive Officer of Yatra Online, Inc. "The Indian travel industry is expected to continue to grow, driven by the development of tourism infrastructure, rising discretionary spending, and more frequent business and leisure travel. With this proposed equity offering, we will be able to tap into a complementary shareholder base which provides a tremendous opportunity to benefit from growing tourism spending in India and to accelerate the important growth initiatives we have underway, driving value for our investors over the long term."
Yatra Online, Inc. expects that the IPO in India of Yatra Online Limited will enable the company to:
• Access domestic Indian institutional and retail investors who are currently excluded from investing in Yatra Online, Inc. through its NASDAQ listing due to regulatory constraints;
• Expand the potential shareholder base of the consolidated company to add the Indian capital markets and increase its visibility to a larger pool of equity analysts;
• Raise capital at a potentially higher valuation thereby reducing dilution and balance sheet risk.
The extent of dilution of Yatra Online, Inc. on account of primary issuance of shares and the value of proceeds through a secondary sale of shares by THCL will be determined by a price discovery process.
The IPO of Yatra Online Limited will be subject to supportive market conditions, as well as corporate, regulatory, and other approvals, as applicable or required. There is no assurance that the IPO will proceed, the announcement added.
SBI Capital Markets, DAM Capital, and IIFL Securities are the merchant banks working on the IPO. J Sagar Associates, Indus Law, and Trilegal are the legal advisors according to the DHRP.
On August 13, 2021, Moneycontrol had reported that Sequoia Capital and Elevation Capital-backed AI-based travel app ixigo had filed papers for a Rs 1600 cr IPO.
MORE ABOUT YATRA
Yatra Online, Inc. is the ultimate parent company of Yatra Online Limited whose corporate office is based in Gurugram, India, and is one of India's leading corporate travel services providers with over 700 large corporate customers. The company provides information, pricing, availability, and booking facility for domestic and international air travel, domestic and international hotel bookings, holiday packages, buses, trains, in city activities, inter-city, and point-to-point cabs, homestays, and cruises.
With approximately 94,000 hotels and homestays contracted in approximately 1,400 cities across India as well as more than 2 million hotels around the world, the company is India's largest platform for domestic hotels, according to the official announcement. The company recently launched a freight forwarding business called Yatra Freight to further expand its corporate service offerings.
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