BENGALURU (Reuters) - India's HDB Financial Services, a unit of HDFC Bank, has approved raising 25 billion rupees ($299 million) through a fresh issue of shares in its initial public offering (IPO), the lender said on Friday, marking the group's first public float in six years.

Existing shareholders will also sell some stake in the IPO via an offer for sale, the firm said in an exchange filing, without specifying details.

HDB Financial's listing follows new norms introduced by the country's central bank in 2022 that required large non-banking financial companies (NBFC) to be listed on stock exchanges by September 2025.

Bajaj Housing Finance went public earlier this month, driven by the requirement, and marked one of the best major listings in a red-hot Indian IPO market this year.

Around 235 companies have raised over $8.5 billion in IPOs so far in 2024, more than double the amount raised in the same period last year.

HDB Financial has also drawn interest from Mitsubishi UFJ Financial, with the Economic Times reporting in April that the Japanese behemoth was poised to buy a 20% stake in the shadow lender.

However, the talks hit a wall after failure to agree on the deal terms, Nikkei said earlier this month.

Parent HDFC Bank holds a 94.6% stake in HDB Financial. Incorporated in 2007, the company provides secured and unsecured loans and has more than 1,680 branches across India.

For the quarter ended June, HDB Financial posted a 2.5% rise in consolidated net profit to 5.82 billion rupees. Its interest income rose nearly 27% to 32.65 billion rupees.

($1 = 83.5190 Indian rupees)

(Reporting by Nishit Navin; Editing by Varun H K, Eileen Soreng and Janane Venkatraman)