28x subscribed, 18% on day one: what India’s record IPO half doesn’t prove

Record money, bigger crowds, better first days. Every number points the same way, which is exactly when it’s worth asking what they measure.

According to Grant Thornton Bharat’s report, carried by IANS, India’s mainboard IPOs had a record April to September 2026.

Source: Grant Thornton Bharat via IANS, 2 Nov 2026; billions converted to crore. Other trackers use different windows and counts, so totals don’t always reconcile.

Timing matters here too: the report says 94% of the money came in July to September, and SEBI’s October bulletin counts ₹40,355 crore from 32 issues in September alone, a monthly record. That same month the Nifty 50 fell about 6%. So this half was less a steady boom than one enormous quarter. Here are three things these numbers don’t show.

1. A record raise isn’t a record investment

SEBI’s bulletin says offers for sale made up 75% of mainboard fundraising in September, and fresh capital only 25%. In an OFS, money goes to selling shareholders, not into the company.

That isn’t a red flag by itself, as early investors exiting is a normal part of how markets work. But “₹40,355 crore raised” sounds like capital building factories, when most of it was ownership changing hands. So in any individual offer, the split between fresh issue and OFS is one of the first lines to check.

2. Oversubscription measures demand, not value

SEBI found a “positive relationship between oversubscription and listing-day gains” on the mainboard. It’s tempting to read this as a strategy, but it has two problems.

First, final subscription numbers are only known once bidding closes, and much of the demand tends to arrive late. Second, at high subscription most retail applicants don’t get shares. As rough arithmetic, if everyone applies for the minimum lot and an issue’s retail book is 28x covered, only about 1 in 28 applicants receives an allotment. The average gain you read about is one most applicants never earned.

A listing-day gain tells you the IPO price was below that day’s market price. It says nothing about whether either price was right.

3. The average hides the spread

An 18% average can come from a handful of big winners and a long tail of flat or falling debuts. SEBI’s bulletin mentions average returns reaching as high as 76% “in certain cases”, while also flagging that SME IPOs were more volatile, with several falling sharply on listing day despite heavy subscription.

And all of this describes a single day. The question an investor actually faces is what the stock does over the following years, once anchor lock-ins expire and the excitement fades. That isn’t in these data.

What I’d take from it

Grant Thornton’s own commentary points the same way: it describes investor demand as selective, focused on fundamentals, pricing, governance and use of proceeds, and warns that a large pipeline may not automatically become completed listings. With 100 mainboard companies filing draft papers in the half, plenty of supply is coming.

When a lot of paper arrives at once, reading each offer on its own terms matters more, not less. That’s the subject of the next note.

Indian marketsIPO basics

Maksud Ahmad Khan

Finance fresher and NISM Series XV Research Analyst, on the PGPM at ICFAI Business School, Mumbai. I write about IPOs, filings and Indian markets. Say hello.