White-label ATM operator India1 Payments not to seek fresh IPO approval in a hurry

It is not planning to seek a fresh approval for the IPO immediately from the Securities & Exchange Board of India because of the current choppy market. “We’re not in a hurry to go and, you know, sell it at any cost,” managing director K Srinivas told ET.

The company generates enough cash to carry out its business of ATM deployment, he said. It is also not seeking fresh capital infusion from the existing shareholders — Banktech Group PTY Ltd of Australia and ICICI Ventures, the private equity arm of ICICI Bank.

“I have nothing to tell you (about the IPO) at this point of time. The board will decide at an appropriate time when we should look back at the public markets,” he said.

The firm had around November 2021 received the regulator’s approval for the IPO, but that ran out in November last year.

The company decided against going for the IPO last year because of the volatility in the market and also seeing some of the new IPOs running into rough weather at that time.

The firm, which installed its first ATM in Karnataka in May 2014, currently has about 12,200 machines under its belt, controlling one-third of the white-label ATM market which has three more players: Hitachi Payment Services, Tata Communication Payment Solutions and Vakrangee. India1 deploys ATMs only in semi-urban and rural pockets.White-label ATMs are owned and operated by non-banking entities, and customers of any bank can use them.

Srinivas said the speed of the ATM rollout would not suffer as the company generates enough cash from internal accruals. The Reserve Bank of India mandates these operators to deploy 1,000 money vending machines every year.

The country has roughly about 2,55,000 ATMs, including about 37,000 white-label machines.

The nature of its business requires continuous raising of working capital because of the growing number of ATMs and to replenish additional requirements of cash at those ATMs. This has led to a rise in its debt-equity ratio, which was 6% at the end of March 2022 compared with 4.66% a year earlier.