'No jinx of confidential IPO'

Recently listed food and grocery delivery firm Swiggy said it believes it has broken the "jinx" of making a confidential initial public offering (IPO) filing with the markets regulator after successfully going public, its co-founder and chief executive Sriharsha Majety told Mint.

- Sowmya Ramasubramanian, Sneha Shah & Ranjani Raghavan

Previously, Tata Play and Oyo shelved listing plans after making confidential filings.

Swiggy made its debut on the bourses on 13 November and is trading at a premium of 11% over its listing price of ₹420 on the National Stock Exchange.

Roughly two weeks after the company went public, Swiggy's Majety spoke to Mint about the differences between running a public and private company, the impact of negative social media campaigns, and how Majety's quieter personality is perceived among a bunch of more flamboyant founders.

Edited excerpts:

Sriharsha, it's been two weeks since the listing. What's different for you?

So, it's been a little over two weeks since we went public. I have been asked by folks in my apartment about how it must be (like) catching your breath. Honestly, the listing feels like a distant memory. But honestly, I can't tell what post-public means yet. We're still going through the motions. We've just finished two weeks. Then we'll have our earnings call soon. So, we're still learning it all.

Many more companies are going public and some of them say they experienced concerted negative campaigns which wasn't the case 5-10 years ago. Did Swiggy face anything similar?

I think there are multiple sentiment barometers that one has to look into in the build-up to the IPO. One of them is, of course, the feedback from institutional investors. We did 100-plus meetings. Got feedback, acted on it. We were feeling good about how the funds overall were feeling about Swiggy.