Private equity (PE) players Sandstone Capital, Sequoia Capital and Madison India Capital have picked up a minority stake in India’s largest domestic handset maker, Micromax, for about Rs 200 crore, ahead of its possible listing on the bourses.
Micromax business director Vikas Jain said these two PE players have acquired less than 10% stake in the company. He did not rule out the possibility of this being a pre-IPO placement, but declined to comment on the company’s plans to hit the capital markets in the coming months.
The Gurgaon-headquartered company will become the first domestic handset maker to go public. It has hired Citigroup Global Markets, Edelweiss and JPMorgan to be the lead bankers for the public offering to raise `600-800 crore, an industry executive aware of the development said.
This is the second PE placement in Gurgaon-based Micromax after TA Associates acquired a minority stake in the company for `225 crore in January. The company, which began selling low-priced handsets in April 2008, has during the past 24 months emerged as the third-largest handset maker in India by volumes and revenues, after Nokia and Samsung. The company posted revenues of Rs 1,600 crore and a net profit of Rs 150 crore in 2009-10.
Micromax leads a pack of domestic companies, which includes Karbonn Mobiles, Spice Mobiles, Videocon Industries and Lava International, that have made inroads into the Rs 30,000-crore mobile phone market traditionally dominated by multinationals such as Nokia, Samsung, LG and Motorola.
According to data compiled by research firm IDC, the market share of local companies went up to 17.5% in 2009-end from 0.9% a year ago. Some analysts say this figure could have risen to 25% now. While latest figures from IDC are not available, the research firm said.
Micromax finished December ‘09 as the largest player domestic player with a 4.1% market share followed by Spice and Karbonn, which had a share of 3.9% and 3%, respectively. Nokia’s market share as of December 2009 was 54.1% followed by Samsung with 9.7%.
In the past four years, Motorola, Sony Ericsson and LG have lost the second spot. Samsung has held it for the past 24 months, but Micromax has its eyes firmly set on this position.
“We will be No. 2 by the end of this fiscal,” Mr Jain had said in a recent interaction with ET. The company claims it sells one million phones a month through 45,000 retail points in 120 cities across India. It sells phones in Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, and Nepal, and also plans to expand operations to the Middle-East, Africa, and Latin America before the end of this financial year.
Source: Economic Times