Burger King marches ahead with India IPO

Fast food chain Burger King on Friday announced that it has set the price band at ₹59-60 per share for its maiden initial public offering (IPO) which is expected to open on December 2 for three days.

The Indian subsidiary of U.S.-based Burger King said that the proposed IPO will see the company raise ₹810 crore consisting of a fresh issue of ₹450 crores worth of shares and sale of 6 crore equity shares by promoter QSR Asia Pte Ltd.

"This brand has been positioned with millennials globally and if you go around the world you'll find that the youngest country is right here in India. It was really exciting for me to bring the brand into India," Rajeev Varman, CEO, Burger King India told reporters.

Varman said that this is master franchise agreement and not just a franchise agreement. "It gives you an opportunity to not a business but build a brand, build your supply chain, to build the product line to build the restaurant footprints around the country. In the last few years we have been one of the fastest growth QSRs in India and that's the reason," he said.

Net proceedings from the fresh issue are proposed to be utilised for funds to roll out new company-owned Burger King Restaurants by way of repayment or prepayment of outstanding borrowings of the company obtained for setting up of new company-owned Burger King Restaurants and capital expenditure incurred for setting up of new company-owned Burger King Restaurants, the company said in its announcement.

Burger King India plans to continue with its 'cluster approach' of expansion where it has six main clusters across the country—around Delhi-NCR, Mumbai, Punjab, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, and Kolkata. This penetration strategy, the company says, helps them to provide greater convenience and accessibility, along with a scalable and better managed supply chain.

"The cluster approach makes us very efficient to our cause. One area where we had to do a lot of work before entering India because competition was here for 20 years is to establish Burger King as a strong value leader," says Prashant Desai, head of strategy and investor relations, Burger King India.

Globally, Burger King is perceived as a premium brand but the company wants to be seen as a value brand in India.

Like every other restaurant in the industry, Burger King, too was hit by Covid-19 which impacted their expansion plans. Moreover now, more people prefer to order via home delivery, rather than physically visiting the restaurants. "The company opened 12 new restaurants and closed 5 restaurants permanently since March 31 2020," the company said.

"People will now be very discriminatory at the brands that they go. They are concerned about sanitation, food safety, etc. We are projecting a lot of business going from unorganised to organised business. It was already happening before and now with Covid, it's going to be amplified," Varman said.

The company currently has 249 operational stores in less than five years and with this IPO, it plans to take it to 700 by December 2026. Earlier, the company had aimed to hit its 700-stores mark by 2025 but because of Covid it was derailed by a year.