Rabin Ghosh

Mumbai: People Interactive, owner of matrimonial website shaadi.com, plans to go public in the next 18 months to provide liquidity to existing shareholders and to build a war-chest for potential acquisitions, chairman & managing director Anupam Mittal said on Thursday.

The company hopes to raise between Rs 140-160 crore ($35-40 million) by diluting a 10-15% stake. The company’s other internet properties are social networking site fropper.com, real estate site makaan.com, and astrology site astrolife.com.

“There is no desperate need to raise capital.We can fund our existing growth through internal accruals. The real reasons to list would be to provide liquidity. We have decided to list in India since issues of Onmobile, Info Edge, and Geodesic have proved that there is appetite for such papers,” Mittal told DNA Money.

Mittal has quietly begun to prepare for listing by getting senior management on board. Over the last one month, he has hired chief financial officer and human resources head. The Middle management is being strengthened by recruits from premier business schools like ISB (International School of Business).

Mittal runs three businesses under the People Group umbrella. Besides People Interactive, there is People Infocom, a mobile VAS player, and motion picture production company People Films. The group’s revenues are over Rs 300 crore and, although Mittal didn’t disclose specifics, reports suggest that the internet business contributes two thirds of revenues, and Infocom accounts for the rest. People Films didn’t have any release last year.

Earlier People Interactive was mulling a Nasdaq-listing, where other Indian internet companies like Sify and Rediff have also raised money. During the IPO, Sequoia Capital,which has invested $8 million for a 20% stake in People Interactive, is expected pare its stake.

Sequoia has also invested $10 million in People Infocom, which provides M-VAS under Mauj brand name, for a similar stake. There are no immediate plans to list Mauj.

In 2006, Info Edge, which runs job site Naukri.com, became the first pure internet company to list on the domestic bourses. Its market cap currently exceeds $600 million. Others like People Interactive and travel site Make My Trip are close to listing.

Mittal said People Interactive has no plans of launching new sites and would focus on scaling up existing business.

“An internet company doesn’t have to be present in all sectors. There are opportunities like in education, jobs, auto, travel, etc but, over the 12-18 months, we don’t see ourselves entering those space. In jobs, there are a 4-5 strong players and till we are certain we can bring a differentiated strategy and dominate a certain niche segment of the market, we won’t enter that space,” he said.

The company expects makaan.com, launched in October, to breakeven in two years. Fropper and Astrolife have already broken even. Flagship brand Shaadi.com continues to remain the money spinner group.

Mittal said number of Shaadi Centres would rise to 200 from 120 currently in 18 months. The company would also consider taking astrolife and makeen offline after both reach critical scale.

People Pictures has a corpus of $10 million as initial seed capital to produce six films in two years and thereafter three-four films each year.

Source : DNA