NEW DELHI: India's Just Dial search engine on Monday launched an initial public offer to raise up to $174 million, marking the biggest share offering so far in 2013 and one of the largest by an Indian Internet firm.

The Mumbai-based local business search firm, which began operations in the mid-1990s as a telephone-based directory and moved later to the Internet, is offloading one-quarter of its equity in the initial public offer (IPO).

Founded by the company's managing director, V.S.S. Mani, Just Dial features 9.1 million Indian business listings on its Justdial.com site while nearly three-quarters of its revenues comes from advertisers.

It aims to tap the buoyant Indian stock market and sell 17.5 million shares to raise up to 950 billion rupees ($174 million).

Mani established the company, which posted profit last year of 523 million rupees, with seed capital of just $1,000. The company's growth has been fuelled by India's explosive expansion of mobile and Internet subscribers.

“When we launched (the Internet site) in 2007, we had 60,000 users a day. Now, we have a million-plus (users). Over 60 per cent of our queries come from our website,” Mani told the Economic Times newspaper recently.

Backers of Just Dial, which now has 4,000 employees, include investment firms Tiger Global, Sequoia Capital and SAP Ventures.