According to Vineet Nayyar, vice chairman, HCL Technologies, earlier the company had made all the arrangements for a US listing, including the requisite permission from the Securities Exchange Commission, before the Sebi orders were put in place. For the same purpose, the company had also got its Nasdaq ticker code- `HCLT'. A ticker code is a unique code given to a company which is scheduled to be traded on a US bourse.

Sebi's decision to relax the IPO listing norm for IT companies was driven by the need toprevent Indian companies from floating issues abroad as well as ensuring that the country does not lose talent.

Through its maiden public offering, HCLT is offering 1.42 crore equity shares through the book building route.

According to the draft offer document filed with Sebi, of the total offer, 1.278 crore shares are being offered through the book building route and the balance 14.2 lakh shares would be offered to the public on fixed price basis after a price is arrived at the end of the initial book building process. Kotak Mahindra Capital is the book running lead manager to the issue.

According to the company, the price band for the bidders during the book building process would be determined after the process of pre-market surveys are completed by the book running lead manager.

Among the others firsts for this Delhi-based company, it will also be the first company to offer an unconventional par value -- of Rs 4 -- in its forthcoming public offering. HCLT has filed the draft prospectus with Sebion September 15.

According to the company, one of the main purposes with which the recent IPO is planned is to fund acquisitions of software companies as a major growth strategy. The other objectives of the issue are to list the company's shares at the bourses to give more liquidity to the employees who have shares under the company's ESOP scheme, to fund its capital expenditure programme and to meet its working capital requirements. Post-offer, the shares of the company will be listed at Delhi, Mumbai and the National stock exchanges.

Under the company's employee friendly ESOP scheme, according to the draft offer document filed with Sebi, the company has offered its employees each equity share at a price of Rs 255 per share (face value Rs 4).

For the year ended June 1999, the company, along with its fully owned subsidiaries, earned a net profit of Rs 101 crore from a total income of Rs 650 crore. And for the HCL Technologies group, which, apart from its subsidiaries, also includes the joint venturecompanies like HCL Perot Systems, Intellicent and HCL Comnet, the total revenue was in excess of Rs 1000 crore.