Credit and finance for MSMEs: West Bengal-based electronics retailer Eastern Logica Infoway was the latest company to list on the BSE SME exchange, BSE said on Wednesday. Eastern Logica came out with an initial public offering of 7,53,000 equity shares of Rs 10 each for cash at a price of Rs 225 per equity share, aggregating to Rs 16.94 crore. The company had successfully completed its public issue on January 9, 2023, with Oneview Corporate Advisors being the lead manager.
Set up in 1995 in Kolkata, Eastern Logica deals in multi-brand retail and retail selling as well as the distribution of branded smartphones, IT hardware, software and allied accessories and services. The company also provides networking and security solutions to consumers. According to the information available on the company’s portal, it clocked a profit before tax (PBT) of Rs 3.14 crore in the financial year 2020-21, surpassing Rs 2.55 crore PBT during FY20. As of mid-December last year, it had 11 retail stores and two distribution centres apart from selling through its own e-commerce portal.
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Eastern Logica’s listing took the total count of listings on BSE SME to 413 since the exchange was launched back in March 2012 with Rs 4,563.05 crore in total from the market. The total market capitalization of these listed companies as on January 18, 2023, was Rs 66,204 crore, making BSE the market leader in the SME segment with a market share of 60 per cent, the exchange said. So far, 162 companies have migrated to the main board from the BSE SME platform.
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SME IPOs continued to boom last year with an 84 per cent jump from 59 IPOs raising Rs 787 crore in the calendar year 2021 to 109 raising Rs 1,980 crore in 2022 — third highest after 144 SME IPOs in 2018 and 135 in 2017, data from the market tracker Chittorgarh.com showed, FE Aspire had reported recently. The SME IPOs have been on an upswing since 2020 when the count plunged to 27, the lowest since 2012 when the two SME exchanges BSE SME and NSE Emerge were launched. The overall IPO pipeline in 2023 also seems strong with 54 companies proposing to raise Rs 84,000 crore with the Securities and Exchange Board of India’s (SEBI) approval, according to capital market data firm Prime Database.