new delhi oct 7 indian companies raised rs 12470 crore through initial public offerings in aprilseptember this fiscal a plunge of 53 per cent from the yearago period mainly due to volatile equity markets and uncertainties in macro environment some analysts believe that the ipo market for the second half of the ongoing financial year will be poor as the secondary market would continue to be choppy on account of high crude price depreciating rupee and tariff war between us and china however others are of the view that concerns related to ipo market may be overrated as the underlying consumption demand continues to remain buoyant according to the latest data compiled from stock exchanges 10 companies garnered rs 12470 crore through their respective ipos in aprilseptember of the current fiscal much lower than a record rs 26720 crore raised by 19 firms in the yearago period in the first half of 201617 15 companies had raked in rs 16535 crore through the route proceeds of the initial public offer ipo were used to fund business expansion plans pay debt meet working capital requirements and for other general corporate purposes by taking the ipo route companies achieved the benefits of listing as well as enhanced their brand name and provided liquidity to the existing shareholders during the period under review dinesh engineers withdrew its ipo on weak equity market sentiments while stateowned garden reach shipbuilders engineers had extended its ipo closure by three days and revised its price band munish agarwal director at equirus capital attributed the slowdown in equity issuance to a combination of multiple factors equity issuance requires stable or uptrending secondary markets and the market direction as well as volatility has made it difficult for investors to price equity issuances in addition midcaps have seen significant price erosion and thus ipos filed with valuations based on markets existing six months back may find it difficult to convince investors on pricing and valuations these coupled with uncertainties in macro environment fpi outflow and hardening interest rates have impacted equity issuance he added the ipo chart in the first half of the current fiscal was led by varroc engineering rs 1950 crore followed by indostar capital finance 1844 crore aavas financiers rs 1734 crore creditaccess grameen rs 1131 crore and tcns clothing co ltd rs 1125 crore the aprilseptember 2017 period had seen initial sharesales of two large insurance companies icici lombard rs 5700 crore and sbi life insurance rs 8400 crore which together accounted for rs 13700 crore i look upon the insurance companies making an ipo as a oneoff event since the insurance sector as a whole was earlier missing from the markets if you remove the ipos of icici lombard and sbi life insurance since these were a onetime event from the ipos of first half of 201718 then the resultant picture for the first half of the current fiscal is not very poor prabhudas lilladher vice president investment banking dara j kalyaniwala said