Pharmeasy has raised an additional $300 million from its existing investors, largely to fund its acquisition of Thyrocare, Siddharth Shah, CEO, API Holdings told The Economic Times. He added that the total capital raised since April is now $650 million.
API Holdings is the parent company of Pharmeasy.
Shah said that once the acquisition of the diagnostics company is complete, Pharmeasy will aim to have its initial public offering (IPO) within 6 to 18 months. "All options are being considered for the (proposed listing) but we will finalise it once the Thyrocare deal is formally closed," he added.
Bankers expected to work on the IPO are Kotak Investment Banking and JM Financial. Notably, the two also advised on the Thyrocare deal which was negotiated by Shah over a fortnight.
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Investors who participated in the additional fundraising round included existing ones such as Facebook co-founder Eduardo Sevarin’s B Capital, Prosus (earlier Naspers), Singapore’s Temasek, Think Investments. The funding round also had a new investor in Kotak Group's private equity arm, Shah said.
He added that Tiger Global is also likely to infuse more capital into the company. Reports were also ripe that Thyrocare promoter A Velumani will invest Rs 1,500 crore in the e-pharmacy startup as part of the acquisition for a 5 percent stake.
Pharmeasy is now valued at $4 billion.
The acquisition is arguably one of the biggest in the Indian diagnostic sector, where PharmEasy on June 25 acquired a 66.1 percent stake in Thyrocare Technologies for a consideration of Rs 4,546 crore.
Thyrocare Technologies' share price was trading lower by over 3 percent at open on June 28 after news of the deal. At open, the stock was trading at Rs 1,395.05, down Rs 53.00, or 3.66 percent. It has touched an intraday high of Rs 1,445.10 and an intraday low of Rs 1,377.70. The stock price has surged over 176 percent in the last 1 year.
