According to exchange data, SoftBank has offloaded 9.35 crore shares in the company at Rs 120.5 apiece. Through the deal, prominent investors, including Citigroup, Fidelity Investment, Goldman Sachs, Invesco MF, ICICI Pru Life, Morgan Stanley and others picked up shares in the company.
SoftBank has been gradually paring stake in Zomato post the lock-in for Blinkit deal ended in August. As of June-end, the Japanese investor, through its affiliate, held 3.35%, which came down to 2.17% in September.
In August this year, it had sold about 1.17% in Zomato, which was valued at Rs 947 crore.
Earlier in October, the Japanese tech giant had offloaded 1.09% stake in the company. Marquee funds, including Citigroup, Axis MF, Bandhan MF, ADIA, Fidelity, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Motilal Oswal among others bought stakes through the deal.
Zomato issued fresh equity shares to all selling shareholders of Blinkit as consideration for the M&A last year. Following the transaction, Zomato had negotiated a 12-month lock-in for these shares, compared to the statutory lock-in requirement of six months.
A majority of these shares are owned by just three venture capital investors, namely, SoftBank, Sequoia and Tiger Global.Apart from Zomato, SoftBank, which was one of the early investors in India’s new-age companies, is also seen exiting other companies.
In November, it sold about 1.8 crore shares in Delhivery. The investor also gave up 2.5% stake in PB Fintech in October. A few months earlier, it offloaded its stake in Paytm.
On Friday, Zomato shares closed 1.6% higher at Rs 120 on the NSE. So far this year, the stock has jumped 102%, staging a comeback from the drubbing last year.
The rebound was on the back of healthy financial performance in the last two quarters, where the company has reported two consecutive profits.
(Subscribe to ETMarkets WhatsApp channel)
