Companies that are looking to go public should start thinking early on, said Aloke Bajpai, co-founder and Group CEO, Ixigo who in June had seen a stellar listing of his company's IPO (initial public offering).
Sharing a thing or two about what it takes to list launch an IPO, Bajpai said that it is important to engage with investors early.
"It's important to start thinking early about this. We had actually filed in August 2021 and by the time we did our roadshows, the market started correcting for tech stocks. In 2022, we decided to give it a pause to come back in better times because the sentiment for tech was negative back then. In hindsight, this gave us a lot of batting practice in the public markets and it helped us meet those public market investors and educate them about who we are and how we are different," Bajpai said during the session titled "Grit Story: From near death to bumper IPO" at the second edition of Moneycontrol's Startup Conclave.
In conversation with Shailesh Lakhani, MD, Peak XV Partners, Bajpai shared his learnings from launching an IPO.
"When we went to meet investors the second time in 2024, they had a lot of context. The biggest learning is start early, build an independent board early, get the governance in place early. Do it for real. Be authentic. The reason why you need governance is because at scale, you can't actually be doing anything that has slightest of impact on how people perceive your company. We had that rigor for a very long time," Bajpai said.
Ixigo 's first (IPO) filing gave the team a three-year practice session. "We had an independent board. We were closing our numbers every quarter, presenting them on the 30th day of the end of the quarter, despite not being a public company for the last three years."
The Group CEO pointed out that engaging with investors early on gives them a sense of the company's story.
"Start engaging early with investors, the public markets, just a few of them. Get a sense of how they perceive your story. Make the story simple for retail to understand because many of our stories are complex. I think it should be very easy for the common person to understand what your company does and how it's different. So that's something we worked a lot on. It's going to be a very tiring process, but you have to give it all because there are many sleepless nights involved in getting an IPO done. But at the end of it, you feel high," he said.
The real work starts now, Bajpai added. "The last 18 years in hindsight were practice. It's almost like the real match starts now."
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