Shares of ICICI Prudential, one of India’s largest asset management companies, rose 20% in their trading debut Friday, following a 106 billion rupees ($1.17 billion) initial public offering.
The IPO by the firm, jointly owned by India’s ICICI Bank and UK’s Prudential, was priced at 2,165 rupees per share at the upper end of the price band. Shares, which were listed on the National Stock Exchange as well as the BSE, were last trading at 2,593 rupees.
The issue was subscribed more than 39 times during the bidding process, driven primarily by a strong demand from institutional investors. Retail portion of the IPO was subscribed just 2.5 times.
Singapore’s GIC and Temasek and India’s public sector insurance company Life Insurance Corporation were among the major institutional investors that participated in the IPO.
ICICI Prudential AMC is India’s largest asset management company in India in terms of assets managed under active mutual fund schemes with an mutual fund quarterly average assets of 101.47 billion rupees. The company had 15.5 million retail investors as of end of September.
Citigroup Global Markets India, BofA Securities India, Morgan Stanley, Axis Capital, Avendus Capital and ICICI Securities were among the joint bookrunners.
Though this IPO saw relatively tepid individual investor interest, global consultancy firm Bain & Company estimates retail investor-driven assets of Indian mutual fund industry to grow to about $3.3 trillio by 2035 from 45 trillion rupees in fiscal year 2025.
This comes as salaried millennials in metro cities and Gen Zs increasingly invest savings in mutual funds, even avoiding direct equities, the report said.
As more retail investors participate in capital markets, the opportunities for asset managers to handle those funds are ballooning.
Investment through systematic investment plans, which refer to investing bite-sized sums at regular intervals, tripled to 2.89 trillion rupees in fiscal year 2025 from 2021, data from Association of Mutual Funds in India shows.
India has seen companies raise $11.4 billion via 252 IPOs during the first three quarters of this year, according to an EY report in October. With many big-ticket listings — LG Electronics, Tata Capital and Lenskart as well as ICICI Prudential AMC — coming in the final quarter, the final amount of funds raised is expected to be higher than last year’s $19.9 billion.
“Due to financialization of savings Indians are increasing their exposure to mutual funds and equities. AMCs like ICICI Prudential are a carrier of this change,” said Kranthi Bathini, equity strategist at Mumbai-based WealthMills Securities.
He added that the stock is “fairly valued, but any dips is a buy opportunity” as ICICI Prudential AMC with its scale of operations is a good play on the long-term story of financialization of savings in India.
ICICI Prudential AMC’s revenue rose over 32% in fiscal year 2025 to 49.77 billion rupees, year on year, while its net income climbed nearly 30% to 26.50 billion rupees.
Source: CNBC