Even as most new-age technology stocks continue to underperform, Perfios, a provider of Software as a service (SaaS) solutions for banking and financial services industry, is readying itself to hit the capital markets.
Sabyasachi Goswami, Chief Executive Officer of Perfios said the company aims to float an initial public offering (IPO) in two-three years, adding that the road to IPO will be a used to put the fundamentals — profitability, sustainability and a set of business engines that will drive future growth — in the right place in addition to establishing the right set of stakeholders — right employees, management, investors and right board.
“We are working towards getting the organisation IPO ready, which won’t be before 2-3 years because that much time is required to build much stronger moat, business, and growth drivers. We don’t want a failure story,” he said.
The Bengaluru-based firm underwent a top order reshuffle last year that saw Goswami, who earlier served as the Chief Business Officer, succeed its Co-founder V.R. Govindarajan as CEO while the latter moved to the role of Executive Chairman as the company decided to build a younger team to lead it to the IPO.
“When you are getting the organization ready for a much longer run, you need a lot younger people, that was Govi’s (V.R. Govindarajan’s) thoughts. He said I need a younger, passionate, paranoid, pragmatic, and energetic team. So, the restructuring saw a younger team promoted to the top order, everybody from within the organisation, nobody from outside,” Goswami said.
The company’s solutions help banks, non-banking financial institution (NBFI) and fintechs make loan application and approval processes efficient by extracting, categorizing, and analyzing large amounts of data-types real-time. These solutions help cut downturn-around-time (TAT) by 95 per cent for processing an application (loans, insurance, etc.), reduce frauds, decrease costs of customer acquisition, offer higher accuracy and better resource utilization, and improve user experience.
Perfios is today the largest SaaS-based B2B fintech software company in the country. It serves over 800 financial institutions, through its 75-plus product suite, spread over 18 countries across Southeast Asia, Middle East, APAC, and MENA.
The company said it clocked $17.5 million in revenues in FY22 and claimed it has been profitable for the past five years. Goswami said the company will look at inorganic opportunities to grow into more verticals and geographies and is open to raising a future VC round for acquisitions. It has raised $126.1 million so far from a set of marquee investors including Warburg Pincus and Bessemer Venture Partners.
Perfios prepares for listing after a couple of fintech companies, launched on the public market last year, continue to be hard hit by market volatility. Investors are worried about the sky-high valuations of tech companies amid fears of a global economic recession.
Paytm, the leading fintech player in the country, listed last year after a mega $2.5-billion IPO. Listed at 9 per cent discount on the NSE as compared to its IPO issue price of Rs 2,150 apiece, its stock closed over 27 per cent lower from its issue price on its first day. As of last close on Wednesday, the stock was down 74 per cent from its IPO offer price.
PB Fintech, the operator of Policy Bazaar, too suffered due to intense selling pressure and global headwinds even though the company showed a solid business model and clear path to profitability. Listed at a premium of 17.35 per cent to the issue price of Rs 980 per share, stock prices hit a 52-week high of Rs 1,338.95 on November 25, 2021 but dropped to a 52-week low of Rs 356.20 on November 17, 2022.
Also read: Shark Tank India 2: ‘Keep hustling,’ says boAt’s Aman Gupta to STAGE founders
Also read: Shark Tank India: Why CarDekho’s Amit Jain believes in ‘pehle banda phir dhandha’