September 24 2020, Mumbai, Delhi: Cyril Amarchand Mangaldas, India’s largest corporate law firm, advised Happiest Minds Technologies Private Limited (Happiest Minds) on its Initial Public Offering (IPO), and subsequent listing on the Indian Stock Exchanges. The firm acted as the domestic legal counsel to ICICI Securities Limited and Nomura Financial Advisory and Securities (India) Private Limited, the book running lead managers (BRLMs) for the issue. It was one of the most successful listings in recent past, and registered the largest listing premium in 10 years and oversubscribed 151x. It was also the first IPO with complete digital filing to listing process post Covid 19.
The Capital Markets team of Cyril Amarchand Mangaldas advised on the transaction played a pivotal role in deconstructing several complexities associated with this deal and in providing sound legal counsel to ensure a successful listing. The Transaction was led by was led by Vijay Parthasarathi, Partner, with support from Shivani Satyarthi, Principal Associate; Akshay Ralhi, Associate; and Sowmya Khandelwal, Associate.
Positioned as “Born Digital. Born Agile”, Happiest Minds focuses on delivering a seamless digital experience to its customers. Its offerings include, among others, digital transformation, product engineering, infrastructure management and security services, providing end to end solutions across advanced digital technologies. Happiest Minds adheres to the dual principles of innovation and customer centricity – principles that have enabled it to provide strategically viable, futuristic and transformative digital solutions.
As a part of the Transaction, Happiest Minds undertook an initial public offering of 42,290,091 equity shares of face value of INR 2 each for cash at a price of INR 166 per equity share aggregating to INR 702 crore (Offer).
The Offer comprised a fresh issue of 6,626,506 equity shares by Happiest Minds aggregating to INR 110 crore and an offer for sale of 35,663,585 equity shares by the Selling Shareholders (Ashok Soota, the Promoter and CMDB II) aggregating to INR 592 crore. This is Mr. Soota’s second successful listing.
Other Parties and Advisors to the Transaction included Herbert Smith Freehills LLP (International Legal Counsel to BRLMs) and S.R. Batliboi & Associates (Statutory auditors of Happiest Minds)
The Transaction agreement was signed on November 27, 2019; and the listing happened on September 17, 2020.