Sula Vineyards shares see positive debut, list at slight premium

The initial public offering (IPO) of Sula Vineyards was open from Monday, December 12 till Wednesday, December 14, 2022, which got subscribed 2.33 times by the last day of offer. The ₹960-crore initial share-sale received bids for 4,38,36,912 shares against 1,88,30,372 shares on offer. 

The category for Qualified Institutional Buyers (QIBs) got subscribed 4.13 times, Retail Individual Investors (RIIs) portion received 1.65 times subscription and non-institutional investors 1.51 times. The company had fixed a price band of ₹340-357 a share.

Sula Vineyards IPO was an entirely an offer for sale (OFS) aggregating to 26,900,532 equity shares by the promoter, investors and other shareholders, which included the sale of shares by Rajeev Suresh Samant, founder and CEO of Sula Vineyards as well as Belgian investment firms Verlinvest and Cofintra SA.

Sula Vineyards raised ₹288 crore from anchor investors ahead of its public offer. The company decided to allot 80,70,158 equity shares to anchor investors at ₹357 apiece. The capital was raised from 22 investors, including BNP Paribas Arbitrage, Morgan Stanley (Asia) Singapore Pte Ltd, Citigroup Global Markets Mauritius Pvt Ltd, Goldman Sachs and Abu Dhabi Investment Authority.

Companies like Kotak Mahindra Capital Company, CLSA India, and IIFL Securities were acting as the book-running lead managers for the IPO, while KFin Technologies was the registrar of the share sale.

Sula Vineyards Limited is the India’s largest wine producer and seller as of March 31, 2022. The company also distribute wines under a bouquet of popular brands including RASA, Dindori, Satori, with its flagship brand Sula being the category creator of wine in India. Notably, Sula is recognised as the market leader across wine variants, including red, white, and sparkling wines.

At present, Sula produces 56 different labels of wine across 13 distinct brands at its four owned and two leased production facilities located in the Indian states of Maharashtra and Karnataka.