Illustration: Sarah Grillo/Axios
Navi Technologies, an India-based fintech offering loans and insurance, filed for an IPO in its home country to raise roughly $440 million.
Why it matters: This would be the most significant amount of outside funding Navi has raised since its founding — and a rare IPO at a time when few are willing to venture into the public market.
By the numbers: Navi posted income of about $93.9 million and a loss of about $27.9 million for the nine months ending December 2021.
Of note: Co-founder Sachin Bansal has largely funded Navi to its current stage and holds more than 97% of it, per the company’s prospectus.
- It's a far cry in terms of capital structure from Bansal's last company, Flipkart. That e-commerce business is majority-owned by Walmart and has raised from the likes of SoftBank and Accel.
- Bansal no longer owns a stake in Flipkart, though he is facing a handful of lawsuits from those days, per the filing.
The intrigue: Going public at this time may not have been Navi's first choice. Prior to this filing, the company sought funding from SoftBank at a $4 billion valuation, per TechCrunch, but that deal fell apart.
