Happiest Minds to launch Rs 702 cr initial public offering on Sept 7

Happiest Minds’ Rs 702-crore initial public offering (IPO) will be open for subscription on September 7. The Bengaluru-headquartered company has fixed the price band at Rs 165-166 per share with 90 shares offered per bid lot. The offer will remain open till September 9 for the general public, while for anchor investors, the offer will open on September 4.

The proposed IPO comprises a fresh issue of shares worth Rs 110 crore and an offer for sale of 35.2 million shares by the company’s Executive Chairman Ashok Soota as well as private equity investor JPMorgan CMDB II. JPMorgan will exit completely, selling its 19.4 per cent stake in the company.

The management said the fundraising will be used to meet immediate working capital requi­rements while the cash balance in the balance sheet will be kept aside for strategic initiatives including acquisitions that could be made after IPO. The firm operates thr­o­ugh three business units — product engineering services, digital transformation and infrastructure and security. “Around 76 per cent of our business has not got impacted due to the pandemic and recovery has already begun for the rest. Around 97 per cent of our revenues come from digital services and 88 per cent of the deliveries are done based on the agile model,” Soota said on Wednesday, when questioned about the timing of the IPO.

"Happiest Minds is expected to grow faster than its Indian IT peers whose digital businesses only constitute of 40-50 per cent of the overall revenues," Soota added. The company, in its presentation, said digital IT spends are expected to grow 8 times faster than traditional IT spends in FY18-25 referring to a Frost and Sullivan report. The company's revenue for FY20 stood at Rs 714.2 crore, while it stood at Rs 186.9 crore for the first quarter of the ongoing financial year.

Soota is an IT industry veteran. He served as the president of Wipro's IT business from 1984 to 1998. The business grew from $2 million to $500 million under his leadership. Soota was also one of the co-founders of Mindtree in 1999, the IPO of which was subscribed 103 times in 2007.

ICICI Securities and Nomura Financial Advisory and Securities (India) are the book running lead managers to the offer.