Magazine : 
Silly Monks rings opening bell at NSE; Makes a strong debut, list at 20 percent Premium; Hits 
144/- upper circuit on opening
Hyderabad based Silly Monks, a leader in digital entertainment, on Thursday announced that its shares have started trading on the National Stock Exchange (NSE) under the ticker symbol ‘SILLYMONKS’.
The shares were listed at a premium of 20 per cent at 
144/- over the issue price of 120 on the NSE. According to data available with the NSE, the company’s IPO was oversubscribed 17.23 times, which opened for subscription on January 5, 2018 and closed on January 10. The 15.12 crore (USD 2.4 Million) Issue size at a price of 120/- per share offering saw healthy demand across all investor categories with HNI category getting oversubscribed by 24.08 times, Retail by 12.35 times respectively.
The listing ceremony was held in Hyderabad by National Stock Exchange (NSE) for the company. Along with the leadership team of Silly Monks, Sanjay Reddy and Anil Pallala, the merchant banker and senior executives of NSE were also present at the ceremony.
Shripal Shah, Director of Aryaman Financial Services Ltd. The Book Running Lead Manager to the issue said "Due to it's unique business model and strong growth over the last few years this issue has received a very robust response from the market having gathered over 260 crores (USD 41 Million) against it's size of 15.12 crores (USD 2.4 Million) from over 6000 retail applications. This also shows the investor interest in this growing digital entertainment sector and the possible disruptive growth possibilities it has."
NSE Southern Region Head Achal Jaiswal in his address said "NSE Emerge is a unique dedicated platform for equity capital raising for SME's. 115 Companies have listed on this platform and raised more than 1600 Crores. Companies from Hyderabad have shown great interest in the platform and currently 4 companies from Hyderabad are already listed on the platform.
Achal added NSE is committed to creating conducive environment to support the unique requirements of SME Companies. We have been working closely with various stakeholders and we are delighted that large number of SME entrepreneurs are seeking guidance from us to explore listing possibilities."
The listing follows a successful Initial Public Offering by the company, through which it raised Rs 15.12 crore through the public offer of 12.60 lakh equity shares of face value of Rs10 each. Silly Monks Entertainment would be the first digital entertainment company to be listed on NSE’s small and medium- sized enterprises (SME) platform Emerge.
Founded by Media & Entertainment specialists Sanjay Reddy and Anil Pallala in September 2013, Silly Monks focuses on content aggregation, customisation, and deployment of content in audio and video format for mobile carriers, devices and music stores both in India and in world markets.
Armed with a multitude of popular digital media properties like MonkStar Music and over 990+ YouTube channels with original content T Sanjay Reddy Founder and CMD of Silly Monks said: “I think the opportunity is great going forward." The growing demand for digital entertainment gives our company an edge, he said, elated with his company listing at NSE Emerge at 20% premium @ 144/- : "I'm very excited." We have a strong IP, a profitable combination of technology and content.”
Proceeds from the Initial Public Offering will be used to acquire audio & video content, to expand their presence pan-India and general corporate purposes.
While SMEL focus is to predominantly to create and manage content for YouTube, the company has been steadily making forays into the movies (both distribution and production) with music acquisition portfolio through our mVAS vertical and web series production. “While our movie and short film acquisition numbers are showing steady growth we believe in creating a larger base with aggregating & creating content for various OTT platforms simultaneously,” Sanjay added.
The company is very upbeat and it is hopeful of advancing into industry leadership position steadily. Given its substantial subscriber base in the Indian regional language section, the potential for growth is humongous.
SMEL foresees redefining of the Digital Entertainment space in the years to come. It is expected that by the years 2021, 9 out of 10 Internet users in India will be in the regional language space, hence consolidating the faith the company has in it’s focus. Silly Monks believes that the OTT space, currently ruled by giants such as Amazon and Netflix, is only now beginning to define itself, thereby allowing for the immense potential of parallel growth as also carving out niches. Just because there are large broadcasting networks in the fray does not necessarily mean the pie is all carved up. With the advent and widespread shift to 4G/5G bandwidth, the players have shifted from the traditional mode of ‘watching’ from television to laptops and smartphones. There is no such prime time qualification of news or content delivery any longer. What was considered prime time slots of viewership even 5 yrs ago, has undergone a sea change since.
A whole generation is skipping the TV world and getting on to watching on mobile straight. Being consumer choice driven, each new content creator creates his/ her own prime time, backed up the viewer and reach analytics that allows for better positioning. How and why should we then believe that the big daddies of broadcast network networks know it all? In the coming decade, the traditional television content consumption will be gradually over taken by the Internet-based consumption. Therefore for us new players, the ‘content universe’ is yet being defined and the more the number of players, that much more exciting the game can be.
The lead manager of the issue was Aryaman Financial Services and the registrar to the issue is Big share Services.
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