Ashok Soota's Happiest Minds Massive Hit At India IPO For The Second Time

New Delhi : Ashok Soota is a pioneer of India’s information technology(IT) services industry, and has been in the industry for more than 30 years. He is Executive Chairman and Co-founder of Happiest Minds Technologies. The initial public offering (IPO) of Information Technologies services firm, Happiest Minds Technologies, which is Mr Soota's recent startup, has got a massive response from investors. It was subscribed a thumping 151 times. 

According to data available with the NSE, the Rs 702-crore IPO received bids for over 351 crore shares against the issue size of 2.33 crore shares. This rank it among India’s most successful first-time share sales of this decade. The qualified institutional buyers (QIBs) portion was subscribed 77.43 times, non-institutional investors 351.46 times and retail individual investors 70.94 times, as per the data. 

The company's shares were sold in a price range of 165-166 rupees ($2.3) apiece. Mr Ashok Soota raised 1.4 billion rupees by selling part of his stake. The sale closed Wednesday while the shares are likely to begin trading next week. Entrepreneur Ashok Soota was also the founding chairman and managing director of MindTree, and earlier also held the position as vice-chairman of Wipro. . Significantly, the Bengaluru-based company, has already raised Rs 316 crore from anchor investors last week. The IT company has proposed to utilise the net proceeds from the fresh issue for meeting long-term working capital needs and general corporate purposes.

The company's shares are proposed to be listed on the BSE and the NSE. . The startup, Happiest Minds gets 97% of its revenue from digital services, listed as one of two IPOs this week who seek the favour of Indian investors. An offering from Route Mobile Ltd which is a cloud infrastructure provider, this week was oversubscribed 73 times on the last day of the sale on Friday as the scene of technology stocks globally affected even the smallest of companies. . Entrepreneur Ashok Soota, 77, founded the Bengaluru-based startup, Happiest Minds Technologies back in the year of 2011. The venture followed a scathing parting with its co-founders at his previous startup Mindtree Ltd, which he had taken public in March 2007. That IPO was oversubscribed more than 100 times. . Happiest Minds Technologies anticipates to expand at an annualized rate of 20%, almost double the industry growth rate, Mr Ashok Soota told BloombergQuint on September 7.