Sriharsha Majety-led Swiggy on Friday saw its public offer subscribed 3.59 times driven by strong demand from qualified institutional buyers (QIBs). 

QIBs oversubscribed 6.02 times by the end of the third day after slow activity during the first two days of book building. 

Portions reserved for retail investors were subscribed 1.14 times, while non institutional investors (NIIS) subscribed only 41% of the allocated shares, according to data from the BSE. 

Overall, by the end of the bidding process, Swiggy’s IPO received bids for 57.53 crore shares compared to the 16.01 crore shares on offer. 

The quick commerce and food delivery giant plans to raise close to Rs 11,700 crore in its IPO at a valuation of  around Rs 87,000 crore or about $11.3 billion at the upper price band, set between Rs 371-Rs 390 apiece. It expects to start trading on domestic bourses on Wednesday, November 13. 

Swiggy, in its RHP, had said it plans to use the proceeds from the fresh issue to invest in Scootsy, its material subsidiary, as well as to repay the company’s debt. Additionally, the funds will support the expansion of its dark store network, along with investments in technology and brand-building efforts.

Earlier in the day, media reports reported that the Competition Commission of India (CCI) has found the food delivery business practices of Swiggy and its listed peer Zomato in violation of competition laws.

The CCI is still reviewing the investigation findings and will soon decide on any penalties or changes to the food delivery companies’ business practices. Both companies can challenge the findings.

Picture this: A healthcare provider in a Tier II Indian city is building healthtech solutions for the world. For Ashvini Danigond, Kolhapur-based Manorama Infosolutions is a passion transformed into entrepreneurship.

“Hailing from a small town brought its own set of challenges, but it was clear that I wanted to work and impact in a single domain – healthcare,” said the Founder and CEO.

Danigond shared her journey of transforming healthcare through technology at a virtual fireside chat titled ‘Empowering Global Health with Indian Ingenuity: Manorama Infosolutions’ Pioneering Spirit in Healthcare Technology’, hosted by AWS Bharat Innovators Series, in partnership with AMD and YourStory.

Sunil PP, India and South Asia Lead: Education, Space, NPO, Channels and Alliances, Amazon Web Services moderated the session.

Expansion and market strategy

Founded with an objective to simplify the hospitalisation experience using information technology, Manorama has grown to serve over 11 countries with a team of 220 technical resources. 

Talking about the initial idea of providing doctors with complete data sheets to improve treatment protocols, Danigond said that they launched their product in 2006 after four years of dedicated efforts. 

“Our initial focus was on Health Management Information System (HMIS), which then evolved into comprehensive digital solutions,” she said, highlighting how Amazon Web Services (AWS) is helping the company modernise its technology stack and manage large-scale data. 

Danigond emphasised the importance of being comfortable in their location and the strategic advantages it provides – a strong medical and engineering presence. On market penetration strategies, she said Manorama works with local partners for international markets. 

The company, which focuses on B2B solutions, has a large customer base in both the private and public health sectors, including major installations in various cities. It works with some large private corporates and the “Big Four” global consultancies—KPMG, EY, PwC, and Deloitte. Manorama’s public sector projects include automating 400 hospitals for Mumbai corporation, Coal India, and a few smart city projects.

Solutions and country automation projects

Recounting the first significant deal that Manorama closed, Danigond said, “The Lokmanya group in Pune involved integrating our solution into a hospital workflow. The deal was challenging but successfully completed in 25 days.”

Danigond shared an anecdote about securing a deal with the Kuwait Ministry of Health for a cardio-thoracic solution despite initial objections. Manorama’s solution delivery pattern and gap analysis helped the company overcome geographical challenges. 

Manorama completed its country-wide automation and enterprise HMIS implementation for the Ministry of Health, Seychelles and the Ministry of Health, Royal Government of Bhutan during the pandemic to provide digital solutions for the government-run hospitals in the countries. 

Sharing details, she said, “Bhutan’s technology subsidiary, Thimphu TechPark Limited, supported us largely in terms of the localisation, cultural changes, and deployment policy of the project.” 

The founder and CEO believes that the Bhutan project showcases Manorama’s ability to build customisable and scalable solutions for large-scale projects.

Future of healthcare and AI integration

Danigond credited COVID-19 for accelerating digitisation in the healthcare industry. She predicted that many emerging markets will move towards complete digital transformation by 2025. 

“Now is the time to help biomedical companies and pharmaceuticals take the next level of action, to go for real-time analytics, and help doctors give more accurate and fast services,” she said. “The real investors in healthcare are the ones who are thinking beyond the decade.”

Manorama is focusing on AI, machine learning, and clinical decision support systems to enhance healthcare services. The company has launched speech-to-text technology along with supporting multilingual facilities and is also working on health information exchange platforms.

The company aims to continue focusing on large e-health projects and national-level digitisation. “Our long-term goal is to make healthcare data accessible and useful for research and development, pharmaceutical companies, and disease management,” Danigond said. A nationwide health ID system for better data management and patient care is also on her mind.

Advising new startups in the healthcare industry, Danigond emphasised the importance of ground-level experience, understanding use cases, and building a sustainable technology platform. 

“Startups must focus on market opportunities, target for the focus market, and then be passionate about the product built,” she remarked, highlighting the importance of choosing the right technology platform.

The Bharat Innovator Series serves as a platform for founders, policymakers, and thought leaders to engage in meaningful discussions about technology opportunities. This initiative aims to foster dialogue, address challenges, and explore synergies for the future. The series features webinars, podcasts, and events that spotlight the exceptional work of Indian innovators spanning various domains.

Service infrastructure in EV is also not just an Ola problem, it’s an industry problem, Bhavish Aggarwal, CEO of Ola Electric, said during the company’s second quarter earnings call on Friday.

“… it’s an industry problem because training the mechanics in EV, battery maintenance, motor, electronics, software, all these are new things. So, we are investing effort into doing this, which I believe is probably the last leg of confidence customer needs,” Aggarwal said.

Earlier this month, the Central Consumer Protection Authority (CCPA) issued a show cause notice to Ola Electric, citing alleged violations of consumer rights, misleading advertisements, and unfair trade practices.

Addressing recent reports of 80,000 monthly service interactions, the Ola Electric founder clarified that these figures arise from routine maintenance and minor inquiries, and are not solely complaints. He added that 80,000 per month is not bad for a company with 8 lakh vehicles in operation, if majority of them are scheduled or minor queries.

“I think there are a lot of numbers floating around. Even if you take the 80,000 number from the press, if you think of any typical OEM product, it has one to two scheduled maintenance per year. If you have, let’s say, a million install base, that’s one and a half to 2 million service touch points per year. Now that makes it about 1.25 lakh a month,” he explained.

The company, which recently debuted on the Indian stock exchanges, posted a net loss of Rs 495 crore for the July-September quarter, narrowing from Rs 524 crore in the same period last year. However, its losses widened from Rs 324 crore on a quarterly basis.

The company saw its revenue from operations jump to Rs 1,214 crore in Q2 FY25, up from Rs 873 crore a year ago.

The Softbank-backed firm clocked a 73.6% increase in scooter deliveries, with 98,619 units sold this quarter compared to 56,813 units last year. As per the shareholder letter, the company’s gross margin rose by 12 percentage points to 20.3%, while the EBITDA margin fell by 17.6 percentage points to -28.4%.

Aggarwal added that the company will see growth over the next few quarters.

“The fundamentals of the EV transition of India remains very strong. As a leader of this transition, we feel confident to be a leader of this inflection point. As we launched our mass market portfolio a couple of quarters back, this quarter came into its own, we were able to supply it almost full demand. Quarter on quarter, our mass market products, the S1X portfolio grew 15%. Despite the growth in mass market, our premium market products continued to be a majority of our revenue,” he said.

Aggarwal revealed that Ola Electric is also developing three-wheelers and plans to launch 20 new products over the next two years, aiming to release at least one new product each quarter.

It also plans to expand its distribution network to 2,000 stores by March 2025 from the current 782 locations, alongside scaling its Network Partner Program.

“We think of firstly product and then volumes. Brand is an outcome of product experience of the customer and, obviously, at the scale at which we do it. Our premium products are holding very good, with our market share in the premium segment, in the S1 Pro or the S1 Air segment, being fairly high,” Aggarwal said.

In August, at its annual event Sankalp, Ola introduced the Roadster motorcycle series, with the first deliveries set for March 2025. The series includes models across mass and premium segments, priced between Rs 74,999 and Rs 249,999, featuring three models and eight variants.

“We have 782 company-owned stores as on September 2024, with each store delivering 130 sales per quarter, roughly 2-3X of industry average. We’re expanding our company-owned store (and colocated service infra) network to 2,000 company-owned stores by March 2025,” he said.

(Disclaimer: Shradha Sharma, Founder and CEO of YourStory, is an independent director in Ola Electric.)