The country’s largest stock exchange, National Stock Exchange (NSE), is now on the verge of getting listed in the stock market itself. According to latest reports, this mega IPO can be worth more than Rs 20,000 crore. NSE has sent a formal letter to its existing shareholders to participate in the Offer-for-Sale (OFS), signaling the official start of the much-awaited IPO process.
Who will get the chance to participate?
This IPO of NSE will be completely based on Offer-for-Sale (OFS). This simply means that the company will not issue new shares in the market, rather only the existing shareholders will sell their shares. According to the rules of market regulator SEBI, only those investors who are holding shares for at least one year before the filing of the Draft Red Herring Prospectus (DRHP) of the IPO can offer their shares in this OFS.
According to the report of Unlisted Zone, only those investors will be considered eligible to participate in this process, who hold NSE shares from June 15, 2025. Investors who want to sell their stake will have to express their interest by 27 April 2026. The final price of shares will be decided through the book-building process. Apart from this, a lock-in period of six months will be applicable after listing on the shares which cannot be sold in OFS. It is expected that NSE will sell about 4 to 4.5 percent of its total equity through this process.
Huge jump in the number of shareholders
In the last one year, there has been a tremendous increase in the demand for unlisted shares of NSE. The effect of this huge interest is clearly visible on the number of shareholders. In March 2025, the number of shareholders of NSE was only 39,201. After this, by June 2025, this figure jumped to 1,59,394 and by December 2025, the total number of shareholders reached 1,86,481.
Due to this huge base of shareholders, designing the OFS has become a very complex and time consuming task. According to Bloomberg’s earlier report, this entire OFS process may take more than a month to complete. After this, the exchange can file its draft papers with the regulator by the end of the month of May.
20 banks and 8 law firms on the front for IPO
If the current prices prevailing in the unlisted market are considered as the basis, then an amount of more than Rs 20,000 crore can be raised from this share sale. This huge size makes it one of the largest IPOs in India. To smoothly run this master plan, NSE has appointed 20 investment banks, which is a new record in the history of Indian IPOs as book-runners.
Along with this, eight law firms have also been hired to closely look into the legal aspects. The services of the reputed firm Rothschild & Co. have been taken to monitor the selection process of intermediaries and provide independent advice.