Upcoming IPOs in India: Track, Apply, Allotment Basics

NSE and BSE both publish IPO calendars on their websites — open issues, draft papers filed with SEBI, and listing dates. Your broker's IPO section shows the same pipeline, and the registrars (KFintech and MUFG Intime, formerly Link Intime) host the allotment-status pages you will use after applying.

Treat third-party IPO lists as starting points, not advice. By the time a listicle is written, dates and price bands have often moved — the authoritative document is the Red Herring Prospectus (RHP), filed with SEBI and downloadable from SEBI's filings page. The RHP tells you the business, the valuation, the object of the issue, and the risk factors in the promoters' own words.

1. You need a demat account and a UPI handle linked to your bank account — both mandatory for retail applicants.

2. Apply through your broker's IPO section or your bank's ASBA page during the 3-day subscription window.

3. Enter the lot count — the minimum bid for most mainboard IPOs works out to roughly ₹10,000-15,000 at the price band — and approve the UPI mandate in your payment app before the mandate deadline.

4. The money stays blocked in your account, not debited. Only allotted lots get debited; the rest unblocks automatically.

Since SEBI moved public issues to a T+3 cycle, listing happens just three working days after the issue closes — allotment, unblocking and credit of shares all complete within that window (Source: SEBI circular SEBI/HO/CFD/TPD1/CIR/P/2023/140). Speed is good for your cash flow; it also means there is no time to reconsider after applying.

Retail applicants — bidders up to ₹2 lakh — are reserved at least 35% of a mainboard issue under the SEBI ICDR regulations (Source: SEBI ICDR, allocation in net offer to public). But within that quota, allotment is a lottery. One lot per winning applicant, irrespective of how many lots you applied for. Applying for 10 lots does not give you 10 times the chance — it gives you one lottery ticket. This is why the ways to increase allotment chances that actually work are boring: apply with multiple distinct family accounts (each with its own PAN, demat and bank), avoid the last-hour rush so your mandate does not fail, and never apply twice from one PAN — duplicate applications are rejected outright.

SME IPOs play by different rules — higher minimums, and retail applicants also bid in lots — so read the specific RHP before applying to one.

GMP is the unofficial premium at which shares change hands before listing. It is an unregulated sentiment ticker, not a price — it correlates with listing pops loosely, says nothing about the business, and can be manufactured. SBI Card's 2020 issue showed the other side of hype: a heavily-subscribed, quality issuer still listed at a 13% discount when markets turned. We break down grey market mechanics in a dedicated explainer.

Early-2021 listings were split down the middle — Indigo Paints roughly doubled on debut while IRFC listed about 4% down. That pattern has repeated every cycle since: hype predicts oversubscription, it does not predict the listing price, and it predicts nothing at all about year three. The only retail lever that matters is the price you pay versus the business you get.

IPOs became popular because a few listings minted quick gains — survivorship bias at full volume. The process is now fast and clean (demat, UPI, T+3), but the economics have not changed: you are buying a stake in a business at a price its bankers set. Do the RHP reading, size the application like any other stock purchase, and treat every allotment as a bonus, not a plan.