Nuvama Wealth, formerly Edelweiss, is India’s second-largest independent wealth manager. It achieved this status by appealing to the nation’s cash-rich entities, including high-net-worth families and alternative investment funds (AIFs), and advising them on where to channel their money to spawn more money.
The firm does this so well that in late June, Nuvama Wealth’s market cap went above Rs 25,000 crore, its all-time high.
As it turns out, executing trades for hedge funds, AIFs, and mutual funds is Nuvama’s bread and butter. In FY25, Nuvama earned Rs 655 crore from this line of business, roughly one-quarter of its overall revenue. Nuvama’s clients are big—one of its major customers is Jane Street, the quant firm that Sebi banned from trading on Indian stock markets.
Unglamorous and far from sight, these services aren’t exactly the first image people conjure when they think of wealth management. But for Nuvama, this printed cash.
Sebi threw a wrench in the works when it started to impose limits on the way institutional investors can take large derivative positions. Then, Jane Street’s ban from trading sucked more air out of the room for Nuvama.
When Mobikwik raised Rs 572 crore from its IPO in December, it had set aside nearly Rs 42 crore as payment to the various vendors involved in the process. However, Dam Capital, which oversaw the allocation of the IPO proceeds, did not release the payments—to any of them.
Now, eight months after the IPO, and paying Rs 13 crore out of its own pocket, the fintech firm has gone to court to resolve this.
In this week’s Long and Short, Arundhati Ramanathan explains what this incident means for India’s IPO scene, and the implications for the scores of professionals who work on these deals.