Beta for WACC Calculation

I am building financial model for a ecommerce startup in India. Trying to calculate WACC, but there is no public company listed on NSE or SENSEX in ecommerce industry. In such case which sectors/companies beta I may use? May I use IT Companies (TCS, Infosys) as benchmark for these values?

4 Comments
 

No expert in startup valuations, so take this with a grain of salt but here are the thing that come to mind:

  • How big is the startup? Does it have a positive EBITDA track record? If not I would not even try to do a DCF. The guess is to subjective.
    • If the company is big enough you can take big ecommerce companies (Alibaba, Amazon, ect), but add a big 'small company'/illiquidity premium
    • If the company is does not have positive EBITDA look at VC valuations. So look at past transactions and use multiples that are used in ecommerce (Revenue, customers, ect).

Hope that others will chime in that have more experience

 

Thankyou IB for your valuable inputs. Allow me to elaborate on the ecommerce startup.

This start-up is still at the research stage with no actual sales or any market presence, which will be serving somewhat similar market as IndiaMART (a private co.)

I am trying to calculate WACC/Discount rate to discount projected FCFF & Terminal value for business valuation. I have risk-free rate but there is no beta or the expected return on market to arrive at market risk premium. Comparable data(beta & return) I have is only of these big ecommerce company (Amazon, Alibaba ) that too from NASDAQ.

 

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