Paytm, India’s digital payments startup, has hired four banks including JPMorgan Chase & Co and Goldman Sachs Group for its proposed initial public offering, people with knowledge of the matter said, Bloomberg reports.
The board of the startup, formally called One97 Communications, also approved Morgan Stanley and ICICI Securities to help with the sale, the people said, asking not to be identified as the matter is private.
Paytm is joining a global share sale frenzy with a plan to raise 218 billion rupees (US$3 billion) in the initial share sale, Bloomberg News reported last month.
That would make it India’s largest IPO. So far in 2021, nearly US$3 billion has been raised through IPOs in the South Asian nation, the best start to the year since 2018, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
Representatives of JPMorgan and ICICI Securities declined to comment to emailed questions, while those at Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley didn’t respond. A spokesperson for Paytm wouldn’t comment.
Earlier this month, the startup backed by SoftBank Group Corp., Berkshire Hathaway Inc. and Ant Group among others, asked its workers to formally declare if they wanted to sell stock as part of the public offering. The declarations would be required before the company finalizes its prospectus, expected to be submited to the regulator in early July.