The National Stock Exchange of India (NSE) has initiated preparations for its initial public offering (IPO), convening with all 20 of its investment bankers earlier this week to begin creating the offer document and establish a preliminary timeline for the listing, according to earlier report by Mint.
The bankers and the exchange commenced the drafting of the offer document and outlined a rough timeline for the listing, as mentioned in an earlier report by Mint.
“NSE met all 20 bankers together for the first time, where everyone agreed to a tentative timeline for the IPO,” earlier mint report said, adding that the process will begin with the identification of risks and the preparation of required disclosures, work on which is likely to begin this week.
The exchange will contact all retail shareholders who wish to participate in the share sale by the end of April, said a Mint news report.
The registrar of the exchange had previously requested retail shareholders to indicate their interest in the IPO at the end of the previous month.
“The exact date of the filing of the DRHP with is currently unknown. Accordingly, only such equity shares which have been held continuously since June 15, 2025 (the cut-off date) will be eligible to be sold in the Offer for Sale,” the registrar’s letter to retail investors read, a copy of which has been reviewed by Mint.
“Once these retail investors express their interests, the bankers will have a three-week period to review the outreach. During this time, the exchange will also formalise institutional participants for the offer-for-sale portion,” said the Mint new report from yesterday.
Mint, in its earlier report, stated that once the sellers and the extent of stake dilution are finalised by the end of May, the exchange will move towards determining the valuation for the proposed offering.
Mint sources as per the news report, indicated that discussions around valuation are still premature at this stage. Subject to alignment among stakeholders, the exchange is likely to file its draft papers with the SEBI by June or early July. Responding to queries, NSE said that following SEBI’s no-objection certificate, its board had already approved the IPO through an offer for sale on February 6, 2026, adding that it would not comment further at this stage.
A listing a decade in the making
The exchange’s decision comes after attempts to address regulatory issues that had previously hindered the listing. NSE continues to hold the title of the largest derivatives exchange globally by volume and manages the principal equity market in India.
The journey toward NSE’s listing has been in the works for almost a decade. The exchange initially submitted its IPO documentation in 2016, but then became embroiled in a co-location controversy, facing allegations of providing certain brokers with preferential access to its servers. As the legal proceedings continued, the IPO was postponed due to a change in leadership.
In January 2026, NSE secured a ₹1,300 crore agreement with SEBI and obtained permission to resubmit its application.
As banks lay out a glide path for the offer, legal experts that Mint spoke to believe that the process is likely to require higher-than-usual scrutiny.
“There have been investigations and governance issues in the past that were examined by Sebi, and this necessitates an unusually rigorous disclosure, diligence, and risk-allocation framework in the offer document,” Tushar Kumar, a Delhi high court advocate explained in a Mint report.
“With NSE, the objective is not merely successful capital raising but the creation of a defensible, litigation-resilient, and regulatorily robust transaction structure, ensuring that the eventual listing proceeds with unimpeachable legal integrity and institutional confidence,” he told Mint.
The stock exchange’s initial public offering is expected to rank among the largest in India, with a possible stake sale of 4–4.5%. According to the Mint report, based on prices of unlisted shares, this offering could be valued between $1.5 billion and $2.5 billion, or roughly ₹23,000 crore.
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