SoftBank's early India bets are beginning to deliver. The Japanese investor, which clocked nearly 5.4x returns on Lenskart and chose to stay invested in Meesho ahead of its public listing, has so far returned close to $7 billion from India to its global investors.
Prism, the parent firm of global travel tech unicorn Oyo, has filed preliminary papers with market regulator Sebi to raise Rs 6,650 crore through an initial public offering (IPO) using a confidential route, people familiar with the development said on Wednesday.
Eyewear retailer Lenskart plans to add 450 stores in the current financial year, its fastest expansion in three years, as the company prepares for a public listing that could value it at up to $10 billion. The addition would take Lenskart's store count to more than 3,150 across 14 countries, representing a 34 per cent rise from the 334 stores opened last year.
Global travel tech firm OYO plans to file its Draft Red Herring Prospectus (DRHP) in November, eyeing a $7-8 billion valuation for its IPO, sources said. The company is expected to approach its board with the proposal next week, people familiar with the matter told PTI.
Japan's Softbank investment arm Softbank Vision Fund exited from Paytm in the June quarter at a loss of around $150 million, sources aware of the development said. Softbank invested about $1.5 billion in One97 Communications -- the owner of Paytm brand -- in tranches in 2017. "Softbank has exited Paytm at a loss of 10-12 per cent.
'Most of them (H-1Bs) are from one country, India, there's a cottage industry about how all those people make money off this system.'
Japanese investment giant SoftBank is looking to partially exit from three startups which are aiming at an IPO next year - Ola Electric, Swiggy and First Cry. But its decision will depend on the size of the offer for sale pool in each of the companies. According to sources aware of the strategy, Softbank invested over $850 million collectively in these companies whose value conservatively would go up more than 4.3 times to around $3.7 billion, based on preliminary estimates of their projected valuation when they go public next year.
OYO founder Ritesh Agarwal has invited name suggestions for its parent firm Oravel Stays, in a strategic move as the global travel tech platform prepares to launch its IPO and looks to have more premium segment offerings. There is a high possibility that the name chosen through the exercise may end up being the name of the premium hotels app that OYO has been working to launch in the near future, people familiar with the strategy told PTI.
A top management leadership team from SoftBank has been coming to India in the last few days to meet the founders of start-ups and other investors, signalling the country's emergence as a pivotal market for the global investment giant. Based on current estimates, India accounts for nearly 10 per cent ($20 billion) of SoftBank's invested assets under management (AUM) globally. That makes the country its third largest market after the US and China.
Clearly, some of the bullishness of the early days has gone missing. Ola's market share is slipping amid rising competition from incumbents like Bajaj Auto and TVS.
'Son believes India has a significant opportunity in chip design, especially in creating IP that will be uniquely Indian.'
The rivalry between Tesla CEO Elon Musk and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has intensified, centering on a groundbreaking artificial intelligence project known as Stargate, reported The Associated Press.
More than 30 technology startups, collectively valued at $100 billion, are poised to go public by 2027, signalling a potential rebound in India's stock market activity, according to a report by investment bank The Rainmaker Group. Walmart-owned Flipkart, financial technology (fintech) leader PhonePe, SoftBank-backed Lenskart, Razorpay, Zetwerk, and Meesho are among the top companies preparing to go public in India.
Physics Wallah has filed Draft Red Herring Prospectus (DRHP) with the Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi), a precursor to hitting the primary market from where the edtech Unicorn reportedly plans to raise around Rs 4,500 crore through IPO.
After a recent fall in profit, Masayoshi Son of SoftBank announced that the Japanese tech investor will look at dramatic cost-cutting. Before he does that, investments in India for calendar year 2022 (CY22) will fall radically, observed sources in the know. Last year, the company had invested around $3.2-3.5 billion in the Indian start-up ecosystem - almost 10 per cent of the total investment the sector received. For CY22, the investments may not even touch $1 billion.
Japanese investor Softbank will pull out its representative from the boards of Indian listed entities Paytm and Policy Bazaar as part of its global policy, a source said on Monday. There will be no change in investment made by Softbank in these companies, the source said. Softbank managing partner Munish Verma is currently a board member in both Paytm and Poilcy Bazaar who will step down from the position within a couple of days.
Startups that became unicorns in 2024 took an average of nine years and six months to reach $1 billion valuation, reflecting the impact of a prolonged funding squeeze from PE/VC firms over the past few years.
Japanese tech investor SoftBank may end up investing around $1 billion in India in 2022, nearly a third of what it did last year, according to people closely tracking its plans. Last year, SoftBank undertook investments of $3.2 billion in 12 deals. In the first five months of CY22, the giant investor has invested $400-500 million in five deals.
If completed, this deal would place OpenAI among the most valuable private companies globally, alongside Musk's SpaceX and ByteDance, the parent company of TikTok, according to The New York Times.
Japanese conglomerate Softbank's arm SVF Doorbell (Cayman) on Wednesday divested 3.8 per cent of its stake in supply chain company Delhivery for Rs 954 crore through open market transactions. Saudi Arabian Monetary Authority, City of New York Group Trust, Societe Generale, BNP Paribas Arbitrage, Morgan Stanley Mauritius, Baillie Gifford Emerging Markets Equities Fund were among the buyers of shares.
'It may take some time for them to get down to the details, such as the location and capacity.'
Trump also said that he has also used the H-1B visa programme.
US hedge fund Tiger Global and Japanese investment giant SoftBank have trimmed their investments in Indian start-ups by over a third - from $3.8 billion in the second half of 2021 to a mere $1.08 billion in H1 2022, according to data from Venture Intelligence. While SoftBank's investments in India dropped from $1.9 billion in H2 2021 by more than a fifth to only $0.33 billion in H1 2022, that of Tiger Global fell from $1.92 to $0.74 billion in the same period. Private equity (PE) fund trackers point out that this year most of the deals that Tiger Global has invested in are in the early stage (up to series D), and only a few are in the series E and above.
President-elect Donald Trump promised his supporters and countrymen that he will act at historic speed to fix every single crisis facing the United States, on the eve of his inauguration. Trump told his supporters at the Capitol One Arena, which was full to its capacity of 20,000 for a 'Make America Great' victory celebration, that he will act with "historic speed and strength" and fix "every single crisis facing our country." He also outlined some of his plans for his first day in office, including halting the "invasion" of the US border and restoring border security measures, which he said will be the most "aggressive, sweeping efforts to restore our borders the world has ever seen."
Keen to back start-ups while they are half-unicorns, SoftBank plans to invest $100 million in a firm with $500-million valuation.
With Nikesh Arora's exit from Softbank, India's start-ups have lost one of its biggest supporters.
With funds from SoftBank, Delhivery plans to rapidly scale up its reach from 15,000 pin codes to 20,000 by the June quarter of 2019-20.
The funding marks the first investment in the Indian food delivery category by SoftBank Vision Fund 2, with participation from the company's long-term investor, Prosus, and other existing investors Accel Partners and Wellington Management, Swiggy said in a statement. In addition, new investors Qatar Investment Authority, Falcon Edge Capital, Amansa Capital, Goldman Sachs, Think Investments and Carmignac participated in the round, it stated. This latest fundraise was heavily oversubscribed following strong interest from investors, and comes on the back of Swiggy's rapid recovery from the impacts of COVID-19 and subsequent growth in 2020-21, Swiggy said.
IPO-bound mobility platform Ola, said it has successfully raised $500 million via a Term Loan B (TLB) from marquee international institutional investors. This term loan has no impact on the valuation of Bhavish Aggarwal-led Ola. The Bengaluru-based firm recently raised $139 million. This is part of a $1 billion funding round for which the company is in talks with investors, increasing its valuation to about $7.5 billion, according to the sources.
SoftBank-backed Inmobi has fired about 50-70 people on performance metrics. According to a source, the employees impacted are from Inmobi and the firm's lock screen-based content provider Glance. This comes even as the company announced that it will skip increments for CY23 and also undertake recruitment only when required. The Inmobi group has a total headcount of 2,600.
According to a source SoftBank is in favour of Ola acquiring the Indian unit of Uber, but the finer details of the deal are being discussed
Energy's exit is a cautionary tale for several foreign investors in India as close to 16 Gw of solar and wind power projects languish without any power purchase agreement, 24 Gw without transmission connectivity and around 2 Gw unilaterally cancelled by project developers.
Japanese conglomerate SoftBank Group on Wednesday said it has recorded loss from investments to the tune of USD 1.4 billion, or over Rs 9,000 crore, for 2016-17 in Indian startups like Snapdeal and Ola.
Nikesh Arora is one of the highest-paid business leaders globally.
With a new $100-billion technology fund, SoftBank is likely to go after market leaders.
Mukesh Ambani is stringing in new partnerships within the Reliance ecosystem with the best in global business -- from Facebook, Google and Microsoft to umpteen sovereign wealth funds and a soon-to-be-declared strategic partner in a big global retailer, notes Shailesh Dobhal.
Ola Electric, the SoftBank-backed electric vehicle (EV) maker, is likely to pursue a valuation of approximately $4.5 billion in its upcoming initial public offering (IPO), marking about 18 per cent decrease from its last funding round valuation of around $5.5 billion, according to industry sources. The Bhavish Aggarwal-founded firm aims to file for the IPO by next month, according to people familiar with the matter. "The strategy is to price the IPO attractively for investors, fostering long-term growth and wealth creation," said a source.
A group of investors of Japanese mobile giant SoftBank has sought probe and possible sacking of its India-born COO Nikesh Arora over potential conflicts of interest tied to his role as an adviser to a private equity firm.
On the cusp of launching its Rs 11,327 crore initial public offering (IPO) next week, food and grocery delivery major Swiggy believes quick commerce to be its future growth engine and anticipates that it will outpace its core food delivery business over the next five years. Currently, the quick commerce business of Swiggy - backed by Prosus and SoftBank - is 40 per cent of the size of its food delivery revenues.
Bank of America has been hit by a whistleblower complaint that its officials in Asia had shared "non-public information" with investors "before the bank sold hundreds of millions of dollars of stock", reports the Wall Street Journal.
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