VCCircle

Info Edge Ltd, the owners of jobs portal Naukri.com, was the first Indian company to list in Indian stock markets last year. Now the company has crossed another milestone. It has crossed $1 billion in market capitalisation. As of yesterday, the market cap was Rs 4,300 crore plus (the value of the holdings of Sanjiv Bikhchandani, its CEO and founder, will be about Rs 2,000 crore). The Info Edge stock shot up by some 38 per cent over the last month, primarily because it was being included in the futures and options (F&O) list by the stock exchanges. Stock exchanges yesterday announced 15 stocks to be included in the F&O segment, and Naukri's was one among them.
Getting into the F&O segment means people can trade in derivatives of these shares, they need to put up only less margin. This means there will be improved liquidity, increase in institutional participation and absence of circuit filters. This is another milestone for Indian internet business per se.
Now another big question is can the company justify over $1 billion valuation. Assuming the company's profits are about Rs 60 crore on an annualised basis for 2007-08, then the stock is trading at over 70 times. This is against an average of 20 times for the Sensex.