Tonbo Imaging, the Bengaluru-based maker of thermal-imaging systems, weapon sights and missile seekers, has fixed a price band of ₹665 to ₹700 per share for its initial public offering. The pricing puts one of India’s best-known defence-technology startups in front of public-market investors at a time when the country is spending heavily to build a domestic arms-electronics base.
The issue is worth ₹852.1 crore and consists entirely of an offer for sale (OFS) of roughly 1.22 crore shares. Tonbo itself will receive none of the proceeds. At the top of the band, the company would be valued at about ₹4,009.8 crore, or roughly $480 million. Anchor investors bid on October 14, the issue is open to the public from October 15 to October 19, and shares are expected to list on the NSE and BSE on October 23 after allotment on October 21.
The listing comes in a crowded week for Indian primary markets. Manufacturing platform Zetwerk is running its own much larger offering over the same dates, and investors will be weighing both companies’ claims on a market that has grown more selective about new-age stocks after a run of volatile debuts.
A pure exit, and a smaller one than first planned
Because the IPO is an OFS, it is best read as a liquidity event for early backers and founders, not a capital raise. Selling shareholders include co-founders Arvind Kondangi Lakshmikumar, Ankit Kumar and Cecilia D’Souza, along with investors CEAQ Technologies and Artiman Partners. Individual shareholders Timothy Guy Mitchell and Ramesh Radhakrishnan are also listed among the sellers.
The final offer is materially smaller than first proposed. Tonbo’s draft red herring prospectus had contemplated selling up to about 1.81 crore shares. The cut to around 1.22 crore shares reduces the supply hitting the market and suggests the selling group would rather keep more of its stake than sell aggressively into a market that has punished stretched valuations.
The valuation itself marks a significant step-up. When Tonbo raised a ₹175 crore Series D round in April last year from Florintree, Tenacity Ventures and the Export-Import Bank of India, the round reportedly valued the company at about ₹1,500 crore. The IPO price implies a more than two-and-a-half-fold increase in roughly 18 months.
The offer is split in the standard way for a company of Tonbo’s profile: 50% for qualified institutional buyers, 15% for non-institutional investors and 35% for retail investors, with a small employee reservation. Retail investors can bid in lots of 21 shares, which works out to ₹14,700 at the upper end of the band. JM Financial and IIFL Capital Services are the book-running lead managers, and KFin Technologies is the registrar.
From a lab spin-out to a defence exporter
Tonbo traces its roots to 2003. Its current shape dates from 2012, when a promoter buyout turned it into a dedicated defence and security manufacturer. It now designs and builds night-vision and thermal-imaging cores, rifle and weapon sights, surveillance payloads and seeker components, the electro-optical systems that let soldiers, vehicles and munitions see in darkness, smoke and bad weather.
The company says more than 28,000 of its systems had been deployed across 24 countries as of June 30, 2026. It has also positioned itself as the backbone of India’s small thermal-imaging export trade, claiming a 94.3% share of the country’s thermal-imaging exports between FY24 and FY26. Few Indian private companies can point to that kind of export share in a defence niche, and it is a large part of why Tonbo has become a reference case for the government’s “Make in India” defence push.
