Naukri.com buys back 5.75% stake from ICICI Venture

Leading jobs portal Naukri.com has bought back 5.75 per cent of the company's stock from ICICI Venture for Rs 5 crore. The deal puts Naukri's valuation at Rs 87 crore. After the buyback, ICICI Venture's holding in Naukri stands reduced to around 9 per cent.

The company will use the shares bought back for employee stock options. According to Sanjeev Bhikchandani, CEO of Naukri.com, the company had started generating significant cash for the last two years with a turnover of Rs 22 crore and net profit of Rs 3.3 crore in 2003-04.

"Given this, we felt we should reward our investors, who stood by us right through the dotcom meltdown," he added. ICICI Venture had a stake of 15.6 per cent in Naukri.com and it is estimated that ICICI Venture has made a return of about 20 per cent on its initial investment through this transaction.

"Naukri will continue to be a dominant player in the business and we plan to go in for an initial public offering in the next two years. ICICI Venture will benefit further when we make an IPO," said Bhikchandani.

Naukri's sales for the quarter ended June 30, 2004, was at Rs 9.6 crore, a 20 per cent growth over the previous quarter. Naukri claimed that resume registration has tripled in the last six months. The company expects a turnover of Rs 45 crore and net profit in excess of Rs 6.5 crore in the current financial year.

Naukri.com has nearly 10,500 corporate clients and over 60,000 live job listings on its site. It has a resume database of 2.5 million and gets nearly 100 million page views per month, according to an independent internet traffic monitoring service, Alexa.com.

In May this year, the world's largest jobs portal Monster acquired the Puneet Dalmia-promoted Jobsahead.com for nearly Rs 40 crore.