Vijay Shekhar Sharma's One97 Communications Ltd., the parent entity of Paytm, is looking to list on the stock exchanges sometime this year, Bloomberg reported. The company is looking to raise $3 billion or Rs 21,800 crore through the initial public offering (IPO). Quoting an anonymous source, the report said that the company plans to list its stocks on Indian exchanges around November and its offering could coincide with the Diwali festival season. Paytm's investors include Berkshire Hathaway, SoftBank and the Ant Group. One97 could fetch a valuation of $25 billion to $30 billion, the report said. Adding that One97's board is scheduled to meet this Friday to formally approve the IPO plan, the report added. Bloomberg said that Morgan Stanley is likely to be the lead banker for the IPO, with the Citigroup and JP Morgan also acting as underwriters. The IPO process will start in late June or early July, it said. While many startups in India are looking to list their shares abroad, through the popular Special Purpose Acquisition Company (SPAC) route, Paytm is going the direct listing route on the Indian markets. The SPAC route for stock listing allows companies to set up a holding company, without any commercial operations, solely for the purpose for raising capital through an IPO. Effectively, an Indian entity can set up a holding company in the United State which will be the Paytm's Empire Paytm is the third largest UPI (Unified Payments Interface) player but unlike the market leaders, it has…
