NSE IPO, a Rs 22,569 crore offer for sale, enters its second day

The National Stock Exchange's initial public offering opened on 17 September and runs through 21 September. On Friday it was in its second day of public bidding. The issue is an offer for sale of 12,64,36,650 shares. NSE itself receives nothing. Existing shareholders are selling. At the top of the Rs 1,700-1,785 band the sale is worth about Rs 22,569 crore. At the bottom it is about Rs 21,494 crore. The implied equity value at Rs 1,785 is about Rs 4.42 lakh crore.

The offer was cut from an earlier plan of about 14.9 crore shares and a headline size near Rs 30,000 crore. Even at the reduced size it is the largest Indian IPO of 2026 so far and the second-largest on record, behind Hyundai Motor India's 2024 sale and ahead of Life Insurance Corporation's 2022 issue.

The lot is eight shares. A retail bid at the cap costs Rs 14,280. Employees get a Rs 170 discount. The book is split 50 percent qualified institutional buyers, 15 percent non-institutional investors, 35 percent retail. Anchor books opened on 16 September. Allotment is due 22 September, refunds and demat credit on 23 September, listing on 24 September.

First-day numbers, from exchange data compiled by NDTV Profit, showed bids for 3.84 crore shares against 8.86 crore on offer, or 43 percent overall. Retail was 44 percent booked. Non-institutional investors were at 72 percent. Institutions were at 19 percent. The employee slice was 98 percent. An earlier flash after 15 minutes had put the book at only 9 percent, with institutions almost absent. That pattern is normal. Institutions often wait until the last sessions.

Grey-market talk on Friday put a premium around Rs 142 over the cap, or about 8 percent, implying a street price near Rs 1,927. Mid-September prints had been closer to 11 percent. Grey-market figures are not trades on the exchange. They are a sentiment read, and they move.

NSE is the venue on which most of India's cash equities and a large share of derivatives change hands. Listing the operator does two things at once. It lets long-time financial shareholders exit a slice of a company that was closely held for decades. It also puts a daily price on an infrastructure asset that sits next to the clearing corporation, the index franchise and the regulatory relationship with SEBI. Because the issue is pure OFS, none of the cash goes into new matching engines or new data centres. The use of proceeds question does not arise. The valuation question does.

At Rs 4.42 lakh crore, buyers are paying for pricing power in a market that still concentrates most volume on one exchange. The risk they are underwriting is regulatory: fee caps, a stronger rival in BSE, or a change in how derivatives are margined. The opportunity is the same concentration. Day two and day three will show whether institutions treat that trade as obvious. Retail already voted with the first-day book. The last word belongs to the QIB column on 21 September.