Bharti Infratel IPO raises $760m Bharti Infratel has raised about $760m in India's biggest initial public offering for two years. The group, which is the telecom towers unit of Bharti Airtel, India's largest mobile phone operator by subscribers, sold 189m shares to retail investors at Rs210 a share and Rs220 for others, giving the company a market capitalisation of about $7.5bn. A number of cornerstone investors also signed up to the deal. However, the deal was deemed only a modest success given the IPO was marketed with a range of Rs210-Rs240 a share. The listing - the largest since Coal India's $3.4bn share sale in 2010 - comes as the BSE, the country's benchmark stock index, is trading up 21 per cent in the year to date, buoyed by moves by Manmohan Singh, prime minister, to encourage more overseas investment. IPO issuance in India in the year to date, however, stands at $1.3bn, in line with the total for last year but well short of the $8.3bn raised in 2010, according to Dealogic. Last week, Sunil Mittal, chief executive of Bharti, declared himself "very happy" with interest in the sale, calling it "a strong endorsement from qualified investors. Which we were hoping [for]. Earlier this month analysts from Ambit, a Mumbai-based brokerage, had said the company's valuation seemed high, citing as concerns a lack of short-term opportunities for expansion given the slow uptake of 3G and 4G services, and poor business fundamentals compared with international telecoms tower competitors. Bharti Infratel, which manages about 34,000 telecom towers across 18 states in the country and also has a stake in the Indus Towers joint venture, will use part of the proceeds from the sale for dividends and to install new towers and upgrade existing ones. The tower group in late 2007 received a $1bn investment from Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, Macquarie Securities, Dubai Investment Bank, AIF Capital, IEP and Singapore's Temasek. The following year, Kohlberg Kravis Roberts, the US private equity group, agreed to invest a further $250m in the business. Joint book running lead managers on the issue were DSP Merrill Lynch, JPMorgan India, Standard Chartered and UBS.