Turtlemint Fintech Solutions Ltd made a lacklustre stock market debut on Monday with its shares falling below the issue price even after the company took a valuation cut in the initial public offering.
Shares of Mumbai-based Turtlemint, a tech-enabled insurance distributor, began trading on the BSE at Rs 136.20 compared with the IPO price of Rs 152 apiece, stock-exchange data show. The shares traded between Rs 132.15 and Rs 144.90 before ending the day at Rs 135.40, down 10.9% from the IPO price.
The company now commands a market capitalization of Rs 3,987 crore ($422 million), compared with the targeted valuation of Rs 4,476 crore in the IPO.
The weak debut comes after the IPO barely managed to cross the finish line on the last day of bidding. Overall, the IPO was subscribed 1.2 times, but the portion reserved for non-institutional investors such as corporate houses and high-net-worth individuals was only half covered.
The IPO, which opened on June 19 and closed on June 23, comprised a fresh issue of Rs 660.7 crore and an offer for sale of 14.6 million shares by its founders and investors. While the company kept the size of the fresh issue unchanged from before, when it filed draft documents in January, it slashed the offer for sale by almost half from 28.6 million shares earlier. The offer for sale was Rs 221.9 crore and the total issue size was Rs 882.65 crore.
Turtlemint’s targeted valuation in the IPO was more than a third lower than its valuation in 2022 when it raised Series E funding. The company scooped up Rs 916 crore (about $120 million then) at the time at a valuation of around Rs 6,150 crore, or around $790-800 million based on the prevailing forex rates.
The Series E round included at least three new investors–Singapore-based Amansa Capital, London-based private equity firm Vitruvian Partners and hedge fund Marshall Wace. These three firms didn’t sell any shares in the IPO but their investments are now deep underwater since the company’s valuation has fallen.
Turtlemint’s several other late-stage investors are also sitting on paper losses but early-stage backers such as venture capital firms Nexus Venture Partners and Peak XV Partners generated strong returns on their investments by selling part of their stakes during the IPO, VCCircle reported earlier this month.
The company’s other investors include Jungle Ventures, Dream Incubator, American Family Ventures, Blume Ventures, Granite Asia (earlier GGV Capital), Susquehanna Asia Investments, and Hummingbird Ventures.
Turtlemint, founded in 2015 by former Quikr executives Dhirendra Mahyavanshi, Anand Prabhudesai, and Kunal Shah, operates a hybrid online-offline model that enables insurance advisors across the country to use digital tools to streamline what is otherwise a largely offline sales process. Shah left the company in December 2020.
The company’s net loss widened to Rs 187.3 crore in the first nine months of FY26 from Rs 155 crore a year earlier. Its revenue from operations rose to Rs 741 crore in April-December from Rs 411 crore a year earlier.
