Peak XV-backed MobiKwik seeks to raise $84 million in India IPO

Indian financial services startup MobiKwik seeks to raise about $84.2 million through issue of new shares in an initial public offering in the home market, it said in a draft prospectus filed with the local markets regulator Friday.

This is the second time MobiKwik has filed the paperwork for an IPO. The startup, backed by Peak XV, Abu Dhabi Investment Authority and American Express, initially sought to raise about $250 million through sale of new and existing shares in 2021, but deterred the plans after the market conditions worsened.

The 15-year-old startup, founded by husband-wife duo Bipin Singh and Upasana Taku, doesn’t plan to sell any existing shares in the IPO, according to the new prospectus. It does plan to raise about $16 million in a pre-IPO round, it said.

MobiKwik operates an online financial services platform offering digital payments, credit, investment and insurance products. The startup has seen strong growth, amassing more than 146 million registered users and 3.8 million merchant partners. MobiKwik, which started its journey as a mobile wallet provider, has since expanded into additional financial services, including “buy-now-pay-later” credit, personal loans, merchant cash advances, wealth management and insurance distribution.

Its Zip buy-now-pay-later product saw credit disbursals of $490 million in fiscal 2023, up 21x from two years prior. MobiKwik’s total transaction value across its payments and credit products also more than doubled from $1.78 billion in fiscal 2021 to $3.15 billion in fiscal 2023. MobiKwik seeks fresh funding to leverage its user base and merchant network to cross-sell additional financial products.

SBI Capital and DAM Capital are the lead book-running managers for the IPO process, the prospectus said. MobiKwik, which was unprofitable in the financial year 2021, 2022 and 2023, turned profitable in the six months ending September 30, 2023. It made a profit of $1.1 million during that six months on revenue of $29.3 million, the startup disclosed in the prospectus.

MobiKwik is the latest Indian startup that is looking to go public this year. Lossmaking startups Ola Electric and FirstCry filed their draft prospectus for their initial public offerings last month. As many as 40 more tech-focused or adjacent firms are looking to go public in India in the next two years.