Rakesh Jhunjhunwala makes huge bid in IndiGo IPO

MUMBAI: Billionaire investor Rakesh Jhunjhunwala is said to have placed a sizeable bid in the initial public offer of InterGlobe Aviation, the operator of no-frills airline Indigo, on Thursday.

The investor submitted his application just before the issue closing on Thursday, just as it looked like the non-institutional segment, which includes high networth investors and companies, would go undersubscribed.

At 4 pm, the issue was subscribed about 6 times, according to data from BSE and NSE. The qualified institutional buyers (QIB) portion was subscribed 19 times with foreign investors bidding for almost 80% of the total bids reserved for this category. Mutual funds bid for 0.38 times the shares in the category.

The non-institutional portion was subscribed 2.57 times. Till 2:00 PM, this segment was subscribed 14%.Jhunjhunwala's bid amount in the IPO could not be ascertained.

An email query to Jhunjhunwala did not elicit any response till the time of going to print.

The response from retail investors, however, remained tepid. Retail investors bid for 68% of the shares set aside for them.

InterGlobe Aviation is selling shares at a price band of Rs 700-765 per share. At the upper end of the price band, the InterGlobe IPO can fetch Rs 3,018 crore.