MC EXCLUSIVE NSE set to kick off IPO process after SEBI nod, board meeting on Friday to approve financials and form IPO panel

NSE set to kick off IPO process after SEBI nod, board meeting on Friday to approve financials and form IPO committee

• NSE board to form IPO committee; DRHP filing likely by March-end or early April
• 4.5% of NSE shares may be sold, worth Rs 23,000 crore
• NSE settled co-location cases with SEBI, agreeing to pay around Rs 1,400 crore

Did our AI summary help?

After securing a go-ahead from market regulator Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI), NSE is set to kick-start its long-awaited IPO process, with the exchange’s board likely to take up the matter in a meeting scheduled for Friday, sources said.

The board is expected to form an IPO committee, largely comprising independent directors, alongside reviewing the December quarter results. The committee will spearhead the listing process, beginning with finalising the criteria for appointing merchant bankers and legal advisors to prepare the draft red herring prospectus (DRHP).

According to people familiar with the development, NSE is targeting the filing of the DRHP by end-March or early April. If the September quarter audited numbers are used, the filing could happen by March-end. However, if documentation takes longer, the exchange may file in April using December quarter audited numbers. Regulations allow DRHP filing with financials not older than six months.

Once the selection criteria are finalised, eligible merchant bankers will be formally briefed, triggering the pitch process—or ‘beauty parade’. Sources indicate that a large number of domestic and foreign bank-owned merchant bankers are expected to be part of the process. An email seeking comments from NSE did not elicit any response on the issue.

The issue will be an Offer for Sale, and around 4.5 percent of NSE’s shares may come up for sale. At the current price of around Rs 2,000 per share, the issue size could be approximately Rs 23,000 crore. NSE MD & CEO Ashish Kumar Chauhan recently stated that the exchange prefers an OFS but may consider a fresh issuance of shares only if the target dilution cannot be met through existing shareholders.

A key operational challenge could be NSE’s swelling shareholder base. The exchange now has about 1.91 lakh shareholders, up sharply from around 5,000 in December 2023, 20,500 in December 2024, and nearly 1.84 lakh by December 2025. NSE will need to formally communicate with all shareholders and seek their consent to participate in the OFS—a process that could be time-consuming.

NSE made its first attempt to list in 2016, but the exchange was advised to withdraw the plan as regulatory probes gathered pace over alleged violations. The listing of the exchange even reached the Delhi High Court, where NSE and regulator SEBI were made parties.

While approval from SEBI’s High-Powered Advisory Committee (HPAC) on settlement was earlier seen as a prerequisite for granting a no-objection certificate (NOC), the regulator issued the NOC without waiting for formal HPAC clearance. This decision was taken amid prolonged delays and after key SEBI departments, in principle, agreed to settle the cases under the consent mechanism, sources said.

On June 20, 2025, NSE had filed a settlement application with market regulator SEBI to resolve the co-location and other related cases. People familiar with the developments said the exchange has agreed to pay around Rs 1,400 crore as settlement for the co-location and dark fibre cases.

In its latest financial disclosures released in November 2025, NSE made a provision of Rs 1,297 crore, over and above the Rs 100 crore already deposited with SEBI in compliance with a Securities Appellate Tribunal (SAT) order passed in 2023.