Gaja Alternative Asset up 20% on stock market debut to o $261m valuation

India-based alternative asset manager Gaja Alternative Asset Management surged as much as 20% in its stock market debut on Wednesday, giving the private equity firm a valuation of about $261m, according to a report by Reuters.

Gaja’s shares opened on the National Stock Exchange of India at INR185, representing a 15.6% premium to the INR160 IPO price, before climbing as high as INR191.65 during the session.

The listing follows Gaja’s $57.5m initial public offering last week and marks the first stock market debut by a pure-play alternative asset management company in India.

The flotation also gives retail investors indirect exposure to an asset class that has historically been dominated by institutional and high-net-worth investors.

Gaja joins a growing international group of publicly traded alternative asset managers that includes Blackstone and KKR, as India’s private markets industry continues to develop.

The firm has invested across sectors including technology and consumer businesses, with portfolio companies including Fractal Analytics and Sarvam AI, which is backed by HCLTech.

Gaja intends to deploy most of the IPO proceeds into its existing funds as well as new investment vehicles.

Demand for the offering was strong. The IPO was subscribed 31.3 times overall, with qualified institutional buyers placing bids equivalent to 43.6 times the shares available to them. Non-institutional investors also heavily oversubscribed their allocation, bidding for 62.4 times the shares on offer.