Inside the IPO Filing of Food Delivery Giant Swiggy
And is OpenAI cheap?
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SB 1047 fails at the finish line: California governor Gavin Newsom vetoed SB 1047, a bill that divided technology circles (Musk in favor, a16z opposed, etc). Contemporaneously, Newsom signed bills “cracking down on deepfakes, requiring AI watermarking, protecting children and workers, and combating AI-generated misinformation” in his own words.
Regulating AI use, and not regulating AI models by size or power, is the right move in my view. No matter your politics, it seems that California remains amenable to its domestic industry’s views.
OpenAI is cheap, if it’s right: Reuters reports that OpenAI expects that its revenues will reach $11.6 billion next year, up from around $3.4 billion in 2024. That pace of growth, and resulting revenue base, make a $150 billion pricetag cheap, in my view. Paying around 13x forward revenues at a company that will roughly treble from a multi-billion trailing result is not insane. However, if OpenAI’s growth fails to meet its own targets, then the size of the bag left held by its most recent backers could be simply massive.
Swiggy’s Swagger
While the IPO market in the United States remains moribund, India’s own is cooking. Data indicates that India saw around a quarter of global IPO volume in the first half of the year, leading to India becoming the second-most active country in the world in terms of IPO deal value.
That is the climate that Swiggy, a venture-backed food delivery giant hailing from India is listing in, implying that when we view its numbers we should consider them from a place of local enthusiasm, not whatever economic vibes we are still sorting through in the United States.
Swiggy is a heavily venture-backed company, having raised $3.6 billion by Crunchbase’s calculations, a figure inclusive of its $700 million Series J that the company raised in January of 2022. That round affixed a $10 billion pre-money valuation to the company. (Swiggy competes locally with Zomato, which has a market cap of around $28 billion today.)
Reporting indicates that Swiggy, far from listing below its last private price, is hoping to list at a valuation of around $15 billion. That makes the Swiggy IPO not merely a unicorn debut, but a decacorn listing. This is a big deal for a host of venture capital firms and funds — more on that in a moment — that should carry as much weight here in the States as Instacart’s own debut.
Before we dive into the numbers to sort out that $15 billion price tag, what does Swiggy do? More than just food delivery, though bringing eats to the hungry is Swiggy’s core business. The company also delivers groceries (Instamart), supports for resteraunt and event bookings (Dineout, SteppinOut), offers a membership service (Swiggy One), and a branded credit card.
That Swiggy, now just over ten years old, has developed multiple lines of business is not a surprise. The question is how the parts accrete to the whole. Let’s talk numbers.