Online-education giant Byju’s, India’s most valuable startup, is finalizing plans for a $1 billion initial public offering of its tutoring business Aakash Educational Services, according to people familiar with the matter.
The company is in talks with at least four foreign banks – JP Morgan Chase & Co, Citigroup Inc, Goldman Sachs Group Inc and Morgan Stanley – as well as Indian banks including Kotak Mahindra Bank. Ltd and Axis Bank Ltd as it seeks to arrange for the listing, said a person, who asked not to be named while discussing confidential talks. The person said the unit could be valued at $3.5 billion to $4 billion.
byju’s The people said the lead bank could choose within two weeks, and a draft red herring prospectus, set to be filed in January or February, to kick-start the IPO process in India. He said Byju’s aims to launch an IPO around August-September.
Three-decade-old Aakash, which was acquired by Byju’s last year for about $950 million, runs a brick-and-mortar center to help teenagers prepare for grueling exams, which will enable them to enter prestigious schools like the Indian Institute of Technology. Gives rank. The offline Test Prep leader has over 200 centers across the country and has also built its digital Test Prep offerings.
a spokesperson for byju’s declined to comment. Representatives for Citigroup and Goldman Sachs declined to comment, while JPMorgan, Morgan Stanley, Kotak and Axis did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Citigroup leads IPO lead because it helped sky Prepare to enter the stock market in India a few years back. The plans were shelved and Blackstone Inc. came in as an investor instead. TechCrunch had previously reported talks with bankers.
Aakash’s annual revenue is set to double in the current year ending March 2023 and its operating margin is around 20%. Strong financials have put Aakash amongst India’s recent IPOs – high-profile but unprofitable tech companies Paytm, Zomato Ltd and Policybazaar.
Meanwhile, Byju’s has put its own stock-market listing on the back burner, one of the people said, because global markets are not supporting the introduction of the new technology. Byju’s was in talks with several special purpose acquisition vehicles for listing, but the global economic slowdown and falling tech stocks have put those plans on hold.
One of the people said that a successful Aakash listing could encourage Byju’s to IPO for other recent acquisitions, and consider higher education platform Great Learning, although it is much smaller in size, among people. said one of them.
This story has been published without modification in text from a wire agency feed. Only the title has been changed.
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