Heating up the IPO space, over 30 companies have lined up plans to raise funds totalling over Rs 20,000 crore through public offers, including big names like IndiGo, Cafe Coffee Day, Matrix Cellular and GVK Airport.

At least 20 of these firms have already got the approval from market regulator SEBI to launch their respective initial public offers (IPOs), while draft IPO papers of five firms are currently “under process” but may be cleared soon.

Three companies — Cafe Coffee Day, Matrix Cellular and RBL Bank — had approached the regulator last week itself, while some others, including IndiGo, are expected to file their draft prospectus this week.

GVK Group also plans to list its airports business arm, GVK Airport Developers, and may raise an estimated Rs 3,000 crore. It has developed Mumbai and Bangalore airports.

The flurry of activities in the IPO space follows stabilising trends in the stock markets and the companies are looking to raise funds to finance their business expansion and loan repayments and to meet the working capital requirements.

It also comes at a time when SEBI has announced a slew of fresh reforms in the IPO space, including for halving the listing period to six days and for making the application process for investors entirely cheque-free.

A majority of the companies, which have approached SEBI, are mid-sized and are looking to mop up between Rs 200 crore and Rs 3,000 crore.

In the first six months of 2015, as many as 19 companies had filed their draft documents with SEBI to float their respective IPOs. In the same period, the capital markets watchdog had given approval to 20 firms to launch their initial share sale plans, some of which were pending from the previous year.

At the last count, just five IPO draft papers were pending with SEBI for its ‘observations’ which are mandatory for any public issue to hit the market.

So far in 2015, eight companies had launched their IPOs and had collectively raised nearly 4,000 crore. In comparison, six IPOs had hit the market in the entire 2014 and together garnered just Rs 1,528 crore.

Among the forthcoming IPOs, IndiGo is eyeing Rs 2,500 crore, coffee shop chain operator Coffee Day Enterprises plans to raise Rs 1,150 crore, RBL Bank (formerly known as Ratnakar Bank) plans to mop up atleast Rs 1,100 crore and Biocon’s arm Syngene International is looking to raise an estimated Rs 600 crore.

Others in the queue include fragrance maker S H Kelkar & Company and infrastructure firm Dilip Buildcon, Amar Ujala Publications — which publishes Hindi daily Amar Ujala , Kalpataru Power Transmission’s subsidiary Shree Shubham Logistics, Prabhat Dairy, Catholic Syrian Bank and Nuziveedu Seeds.

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