I made Rs 2.25 Cr within 8 minutes of Zomato going public: Ashneer Grover

NEW DELHI: Former BharatPe co-founder and CEO Ashneer Grover has revealed he made a cool Rs 2.25 crore from Zomato’s IPO within 8 minutes of its opening in July last year.

In his memoir Doglapan, Grover said that when the IPO was oversubscribed more than 30 times, he received an allotment of shares worth over Rs 3 crore.

“My RMs (relationship managers) expected Zomato stock to trade between Rs 85-90 based on gray market premiums versus an issue price of Rs 76. However, I was sure that she would do far better. When the stock opened at 116 rupees per share on the trading day, I instructed them to sell all my shares,” he wrote.

When the trade was executed, “I received a selling price of Rs 136 per share. As my landing cost after interest was between Rs 82-85 I ended up making over Rs 2.25 crore,” he said. “Within eight minutes of Zomato’s IPO opening, I had made over Rs 2.25 crore.”

Grover said he got a little greedy after Zomato went public.

“I signed up for the Car Trade IPO but ended up losing Rs 25 lakh there,” he said.

Grover, who is currently facing a court case filed by BharatPe, which he co-founded, said he was optimistic about Zomato’s IPO on several counts.

“Obviously I knew about Deepinder (Goyal) and I really believe in his ability to persevere and keep building big. Basically, with the pandemic, the ticket size of their orders had increased as people ordered food from home 3-4 members in the family as opposed to single roles in office, increasing Zomato’s absolute margins,” he wrote.

Additionally, since restaurants were completely dependent on app orders during the lockdown, there was no risk of the take rate dropping.

“On the other hand, job insecurity among delivery boys kept delivery costs under control. In fact, COVID magically solved the economics of food delivery in the country overnight, just as it skyrocketed UPI penetration,” Grover said.

Grover found itself in a heated dispute with Kotak Mahindra Bank after their financing agreement fell through during the IPO of FSN E-Commerce Ventures Ltd., owner of Nykaa.