Idea Cellular, the telecom company of the Aditya Birla group, aims to raise Rs 2,500 crore (Rs 25 billion) through an initial public offering. The company will go in for a pre-IPO private placement of 15 per cent of the shares to be offered through the issue.
The company today filed a red herring prospectus with the Securities and Exchange Board of India. The entirely book-built IPO will have a green-shoe option.
Investment bankers said the IPO should hit the market within a month, subject to Sebi's clearance. The pre-IPO placement of shares would act as a benchmark for pricing of the IPO.
The company would offer nearly 10-12 per cent of the post-issue capital through the proposed IPO, which put its valuation at Rs 20,000-25,000 crore (Rs 200-250 billion), they added.
The market capitalisation of the other two leading telecom companies, Bharti and Reliance Communications, today stood at Rs 121,097 crore (Rs 1,210.97 billion) and Rs 93,654 crore (Rs 936.54 billion), respectively.
The Aditya Birla group had divested nearly a 33 per cent stake to a handful of investors such as Providence Equity Partners of the US, India's ChrysCapital, the UK's TA Associates and GLG Partners and Citigroup.
The group sold the shares at Rs 50-53 apiece, substantially higher than what it paid to buy out the Tata group's shareholding this April.
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