naukri.com gets listed to fund diversification plans

New Delhi, Oct 30 (UNI) Info Edge (India), more known by its brands naukri.com and jeevansathi.com, plans to diversify into other classified segments like automobiles, education and yellow pages through its Rs 150-170 crore IPO which opens today.

It is the first dotcom company to offer an IPO in India, after the internet bubble in 2000 when Rediff.com and Sify got listed on the Nasdaq.

''The company plans to diversify into other segments of online classifieds market like automobile, educational, yellow pages and industrial products and also expand in the West and South Asia,'' company Founder and CEO Sanjeev Bikhchandani told reporters here today.

The company will use issue proceeds to purchase or lease real estate for its offices, to acquire companies and use alternative delivery models such as messages through mobiles, etc.

Mr Bikhchandani added that the company might launch a new portal in the next six to eight months but it did not have any concrete plans as of now.

The company is offering 5,323,851 equity shares of Rs 10 each through a 100 per cent book building process, which constitutes 19.5 per cent of the fully diluted post issue paid-up equity capital of the company.

The price band for the issue has been fixed between Rs 290-320 per share and will close on November 2.

Of the total issue, 5.32 lakh equity shares will be reserved for the employees putting the net issue to the public at 47.91 lakh equity shares.

At least 60 per cent of the issue will be given to qualified institutional buyers (QIBs) of which 5 per cent will be allocated to mutual funds only. Up to 10 per cent will be given to non institutional bidders and remaining 30 per cent to retail individual bidders on a proportionate basis.

ICICI Securities and Citigroup Global Markets India are the book running lead managers to the issue.

The company reported a net profit of Rs 13.29 crore during FY06 as compared to Rs 0.31 crore in FY05. The total income stood at Rs 84.06 crore during FY06, riding almost totally on naukri.com -- the job portal contributes more than 90 per cent of the income -- as against Rs 45.12 crore in FY05.

The company's business comes through its four sites naukri.com for recruitment, jeevansathi.com, the online matrimonial division, 99acres.com, the online real estate classified division and Quadrangle, an offline executive search division.

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