Zomato is serving its pricey IPO at the time of a cold tech war in India

The final shape of the country's emerging digital economy is still unclear, writes Andy Mukherjee.

India’s current rate of spawning unicorns, or startups with at least a billion dollars in valuation, is almost three per month. But all that action is in private markets; practically nothing of the digital economy trades publicly. Which explains the nervous excitement over this week’s initial public offering by one of the country’s two dominant online food-delivery services. 

As China cracks down on data-heavy businesses from finance to ride-hailing, Zomato Ltd., backed by Jack Ma’s Ant Group Co., is beefing up its IPO in the Indian market to Rs 93.75 billion ($1.3 billion) because of high demand.

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