MUMBAI: The National Stock Exchange of India (NSE) has begun preparations for its initial public offering (IPO), meeting all 20 of its investment bankers earlier this week to start drafting the offer document and outline a tentative timeline for the listing, three people aware of the matter told Mint.
The IPO bankers and the exchange started the drafting process for the offer document and chalked out a rough timeline for the listing, one of the people cited above said on the condition of anonymity.
"NSE met all 20 bankers together for the first time, where everyone agreed to a tentative timeline for the IPO," this person 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, a second person aware of the discussions said, wishing not to be named discussing private deliberations.
The exchange’s registrar had already asked retail shareholders late last month to express their interest in the IPO.
"The exact date of the filing of the DRHP with Sebi 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," the second person explained.
Once the sellers and the stake they are paring are fixed by the end of May, the exchange will determine the valuation for the offering, the third person explained. "Right now, everyone agrees that it is too early to discuss valuations," this person added.
If all goes according to plan and everyone is on the same page about the valuation, the exchange is eyeing to file draft papers with the Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) by June or early July, the second person added.
“Pursuant to the NOC issued by Sebi, the board approved an initial public offering of the Company through an offer for sale on 6 February 2026. No further comments at this stage,” NSE said in response to Mint's queries.
A listing a decade in the making
The move follows efforts by the exchange to resolve regulatory matters that previously stalled the listing. NSE remains the largest derivatives exchange in the world by volume and operates the primary equity market in India.
NSE’s listing has been building for nearly 10 years. The exchange first filed its IPO papers in 2016, after which it was caught up in the co-location scandal and accused of giving select brokers unfair access to its servers. As the case dragged on, the IPO was shelved amid a leadership overhaul.
In January 2026, NSE reached a ₹1,300 crore settlement with Sebi and received the go-ahead to refile its papers.
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.
"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 bourse's IPO is likely to be among India's largest offerings with a potential 4–4.5% stake sale. Based on unlisted share prices, this could make the offer worth $1.5 billion to $2.5 billion, or approximately ₹23,000 crore.
The NSE IPO is part of a pipeline of large public offerings expected in 2026, including planned listings by Reliance's Jio Platforms, India's largest asset manager SBI Funds, and e-commerce operator Flipkart. These upcoming issuances follow 2025's primary market activity, during which 371 companies raised over ₹1.75 trillion, featuring large IPOs from companies such as HDB Financial Services Ltd, LG Electronics India Ltd and ICICI Prudential Asset Management Co.
