Online retailer BrainBees Solutions Pvt., the parent of FirstCry, filed for an initial public offering with markets regulator SEBI on Thursday.
The maiden public offering will be a combination of a fresh issue and an offer for sale. The Pune-based unicorn plans to sell fresh equity shares worth Rs 1,816 crore, while existing investors, including SoftBank, will sell up to 5.44 crore shares via an offer for sale, according to its draft red herring prospectus.
SoftBank will offload around 2.03 crore shares as part of the OFS. Mahindra & Mahindra Ltd. will offload 28.06 lakh shares, while TPG Growth, Premji Invest and NewQuest Asia will also sell shares. The company will also raise a pre-IPO placement for shares worth Rs 363.2 crore.
In its DRHP, FirstCry says it will use a major part of the proceeds—Rs 648 crore—to fuel its expansion, including setting up new modern stores, a warehouse and lease payments for its existing identified modern stores in India.
It will use Rs 156 crore for expansion in Saudi Arabia and the rest of the proceeds will be used for acquiring additional stake in indirect subsidiaries, marketing initiatives, furthering technology and funding inorganic growth.
The company posted a revenue of Rs 1,407 crore for the first quarter of FY24, with a loss of Rs 110.4 crore.
In the last financial year, the company reported a consolidated revenue from operations of Rs 5,632.5 crore, up from Rs 2,401.2 crore in 2021–22, according to financials sourced from Tofler.
However, its loss widened to Rs 486 crore in fiscal 2023 from Rs 78.6 crore in the year-ago period. It was mostly due to an over twofold rise in expenditure to Rs 6,271.2 crore, largely driven by the cost of raw materials. The company was profitable in fiscal 2021.
Launched in 2010, FirstCry sells a wide range of products for babies, kids and mothers through online and physical stores. It has raised about $425 million till date and turned unicorn in 2020 when SoftBank invested around $300 million.
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