Veteran investor Shankar Sharma said he has no interest in the initial public offering of Lenkart Solutions Ltd. and never met founder and CEO Peyush Bansal.
"I have no interest in Lenskart IPO and offers coming from Indian tech companies. I never met Peyush Bansal and I am good friends with Radhakishan Damani," Sharma, founder of GQuant Investech, told NDTV Profit in a televised interview on Friday, hours before the launch of the IPO.
He said Lenskart is going public at a valuation nearly 10 times its revenue, compared to companies that have previously been at 25x to 50x. "They (Lenskart) are already being conservative. Lenskart's valuation is not as bad as it is being made out to be on social media."
Sharma, an early investor in companies like Amazon and Apple, called Indian tech companies "overvalued" and slammed large institutional investors participating in the anchor round for hyping up such IPOs. "I never apply in such overvalued Indian tech companies."
"India is the dumbest IPO market in history with merchant bankers exploiting the many billions flowing from retail investors. I don't blame merchant bankers or pre-IPO investors. You somehow get an IPO valuation which does not justify under any metric," he said.
Sharma's statement comes against the backdrop of growing concerns over Lenskart's valuation, pegged at around Rs 70,000 crore. Many have pointed out the company's high price-to-sales multiple exceeding 10x and a high price-to-earnings ratio of 230x.
In a post on X earlier, Sharma mockingly compared Lenskart's pricing to the sky-high valuations of past tech IPOs, suggesting any criticism was just an "organised campaign."
In addition to Lenskart's high valuations, market watchers are not particularly happy with the way the management has tried to justify the concerns by simply stating the company's aim to 'create value for the customer'.
Watch the full interview of Shankar Sharma:
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