Posted by : The Caspian Debt Team The Equitas IPO
One of Caspian’s early investees, Equitas Holdings, a Chennai based diversified financial services player that provides small ticket loans to individuals and micro enterprises closed a highly successful IPO on 7th April, 2016.
The company has three business verticals which include microfinance, commercial vehicle finance and housing finance.
The IPO issue was subscribed more than 17 times even though Foreign Institutional Investors were not allowed to participate. This is possibly the largest ever domestic only IPO issue and is the first ever issue of a Small Finance Bank licensee.
Caspian was one of the earliest investors in Equitas, back in 2008 and we made multiple follow on investments over the years from our two funds – Bellwether and IFIF. At the time of the IPO, we were the third largest shareholder in the company. Caspian will continue to hold a small stake post the IPO.
As a part of Caspian’s impact assessment initiatives, Equitas Holdings underwent a GIIRS rating process and received a Platinum and 5 Star rating for social and environmental measures, the highest ratings available under GIIRS. GIIRS is a ratings platform for impact investing that provides comparable social and environmental performance data on high impact investment funds and companies seeking investment capital.
For further information on the Equitas IPO, please read this news article.