CE Info Systems, the India-based owner of digital map brand MapmyIndia backed by corporate venturing groups Qualcomm and Flipkart, has floated on local stock exchanges giving a boost to a wave of local unicorns (private companies valued at $1bn or over) created this past year.
The company’s shares opened at Rs 1,581 ($20.90) on the BSE, a 53% premium issue on the issue price of Rs 1,033, while on the National Stock Exchange, the opening price was Rs 1,565. It now has a market capitalisation of approximately Rs 84bn ($1.1bn).
The issue is valued at 27-times the annualised enterprise value/sales for CE Info in the first half of the 2022 fiscal year, which although expensive, is similar to other Indian unicorns, investment broker Motilal Oswal told MoneyControl. Its revenue in the 2021 fiscal year increased to over Rs 1.52bn from Rs 14.8bn the year before.
Other India-based startups that could potentially follow CE Info on to the public markets after achieiving unicorn valuations include GupShup, a conversational messaging platform backed by investment firm Tiger Global Management, Innovaccer, a health-tech startup backed by Microsoft’s M12, and ShareChat, a social media company that counts Tencent and Snap as investors.
In December 2015, local e-commerce marketplace Flipkart was set to acquire a 34% stake in CE Info in a deal that valued the latter at about $260m.
Founded in the 1990s, MapmyIndia provides a range of digital mapping services including global positioning system navigation, geographical information and tracking as well as location-based apps and services.
Flipkart aimed to use MapmyIndia’s technology to strengthen its logistics network, and in particular its first-mile pickup and last mile delivery capabilities, in addition to helping it understand customer behaviour to inform the placement of its hyperlocal distribution and warehouse centres.
CE Info had reportedly raised about $30m prior to the Flipkart investment, from investors including Qualcomm Ventures, the subsidiary of US-based chipmaker Qualcomm that led led the company’s series C round, and map publisher Zenrin.
Varsha Tagare, a managing director at Qualcomm Ventures who leads a $150m fund dedicated to India and cross-border digital enterprise investments, told Global Corporate Venturing by email: “We have witnessed MapMyIndia’s digital transition as they moved from building their map database from paper based mapping techniques, to satellites and mobile-based mapping techniques.
“The rich mapping database has enabled key projects in the geography such as tower infrastructure rollouts, retail location rollouts and logistics rollouts. Early customers include Coca-Cola India, which began its engagement in order to locate its national network of bottlers, which was important for Coca-Cola India’s legal team. That relationship expanded into geolocating and mapping its retail network, and then its transport and logistics partners. This was important for Coca-Cola India’s distribution and merchandising teams.
“Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) and MapmyIndia announced a path-breaking Aatmanirbhar Bharat (Prime Minister Modi’s Self Reliant India initiative) initiative to partner together, to offer India’s best, and fully indigenous, mapping portal and geospatial services, by combining the power of MapmyIndia’s digital maps and technologies with ISRO’s catalogue of satellite imagery and earth observation data.
“MapMyIndia has enabled many location-based services enabled by their deep mapping database. Their mapping service is used by enterprises in sectors like automotive. The company’s IoT platform, ‘InTouch’, provides APIs to customers like Phonepe and Grofers allowing them to build applications like near, real-time vehicle and asset tracking for fleets, transport and logistics. Today MapMyIndia also enables maps for Apple and Alexa.
“We’ve been a longtime investor in MapMyIndia, supporting their journey in becoming a local player with a strong business around digital maps that enable a variety of use cases in various industries including automotive, logistics and the internet of things. Qualcomm ventures has a long history of investing in this sector globally including in companies like Waze.
“We look forward to working with MapMyIndia in various segments of auto and IoT and wish them a great journey ahead as a public company.”
