SoftBank sold 8 crore equity shares in ecommerce platform Meesho for ₹1,650.40 crore, representing a 1.7% stake, according to NSE data. The shares were offloaded in two tranches at a weighted average price of ₹206.30 per share, a 1.6% discount to the stock’s closing price, as reported by inc42.com.
The shares were acquired by several institutional investors, with Franklin Templeton purchasing 96.7 lakh shares, followed by Societe Generale with 80 lakh shares. Fidelity bought 66.7 lakh shares through nine entities, while Manulife-associated entities acquired a combined 50.3 lakh shares. Other buyers included HDFC Standard Life Insurance, Goldman Sachs, Motilal Oswal, Morgan Stanley, HSBC Mutual Fund, and sovereign wealth funds from Kuwait, Oman, and Norway, inc42.com detailed.
SoftBank held 39.6 crore shares in Meesho, amounting to 8.6% of the company’s total equity at the end of the June quarter. This sale is part of SoftBank’s recent trend of reducing stakes in Indian tech stocks, including a ₹2,887.9 crore sale of Lenskart shares last week and a previous ₹2,873.3 crore offload in June, according to inc42.com.
The Meesho stake sale by SoftBank follows its broader strategy of portfolio rebalancing in Indian new-age tech companies. The transaction’s details were reflected in NSE disclosures today, marking one of the notable secondary market transactions in the Indian ecommerce sector this year.