Dhanpal Jhaveri, VC of Everstone Group on Tuesday said that they are looking at taking 1-2 portfolio companies public in 2021.
“As far as capital markets are concerned, we will look to at the right time come out with IPOs of companies that we believe would be ready to come into the market and then build a life as a listed company. We are still developing a lot of our portfolio companies, but sometime in 2021 we would look to potentially taking one or two companies public,” he said in an interview to CNBC-TV18.
According to Jhaveri, the opportunity in Indian QSR is very significant. He also said that though COVID-19 impacted consumption including Burger King, it has been able to come out of the crises in good shape.
“COVID had a big impact on the entire retail industry including the QSR business. Burger King was no different. We, however, were able to very quickly pivot our business, build a digital strategy, build a delivery strategy, and that has helped us come out of this crisis in a pretty good shape,” he said.
He said that the IPO allowed Burger King to raise growth money for more outlets. The plan is to take the business to 700 restaurants, he added.
“What most investors are looking at is the long term prospects of this business. We do have a plan to take this business in the next few years to 700 restaurants and that is something that the IPO allowed us to raise the growth capital required to get to those targets,” he said.
Jhaveri said that Indostar is one of the best-capitalised NBFCs and retailisation has helped the company in a big way.
“Indostar started primarily doing corporate lending, but as we built the franchise, over the last 4 years we have been rapidly retailing the assets of the business. So, if you look at just before the IPO, 80 percent of our balance sheet in terms of assets was corporate assets. However, today, close to 75 percent of balance sheet is retail assets. This realisation in my view is something that has helped the company tide over possibly one of the biggest challenges the NBFC sector went through in the last three years. Indostar has been to ride through that, build a retail franchise and today in my view is one of the best-capitalized NBFCs poised to grow as we look forward to the economy coming back strongly,” he said.
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