India's National Stock Exchange Files for IPO That Could Be the Country's Largest Ever

Nine Years in the Making

The National Stock Exchange of India filed its Draft Red Herring Prospectus with the Securities and Exchange Board of India on the night of June 18, 2026, according to Mint. The filing caps a regulatory saga that stretches back to 2016, when NSE first attempted to go public.

The delay stems from a sprawling co-location scandal in which certain brokers allegedly received preferential access to NSE's trading servers. NSE settled that dispute with SEBI for roughly $160 million in 2025, according to Crypto Briefing. SEBI issued a no-objection certificate in late January 2026, and NSE's board formally approved the IPO plan on February 6, 2026.

The Structure

This is a pure offer-for-sale. NSE itself raises nothing. The 149 million shares — about 6% of the company's paid-up capital — belong entirely to existing institutional shareholders who want out, or at least partially out.

According to Mint, the ten selling shareholders include State Bank of India (the largest seller, offloading up to 24.75 million shares), Morgan Stanley's MS Strategic (Mauritius) Ltd (16 million shares), Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (11.87 million shares), Temasek's Aranda Investments (11.24 million shares), Bank of Baroda, Stock Holding Corp., and four Indian state-run insurers.

Life Insurance Corp. of India, NSE's single-largest shareholder at 10.72%, is holding its full stake. So are Premji Invest (2.35%) and billionaire Radhakishan Damani (1.58%), according to the DRHP as reported by Mint.

Because Indian regulations prohibit an exchange from listing on its own platform, NSE's shares will list on its smaller rival, BSE Ltd.

The Numbers

Gray-market pricing on unlisted NSE shares has been hovering around ₹1,935 to ₹2,000 per share, according to Crypto Briefing and Mint. At ₹2,000, Mint calculates a total valuation above ₹5 trillion, with the IPO itself raising approximately ₹29,780 crore — roughly $3.5 billion at current exchange rates.

That would surpass the previous record holder: Hyundai Motor India's 278.7 billion-rupee IPO in 2024, according to the Financial Post.

NSE commands 93% of India's cash equity market and nearly 100% of equity futures trading, according to its DRHP filing as cited by CNBC. Daily derivatives turnover regularly exceeds ₹4 lakh crore (roughly $48 billion). Its competitor BSE trades at 66 times trailing earnings on a market cap of $17.2 billion, per CNBC — a data point that will anchor NSE valuation debates.

The Broader IPO Picture

India's IPO market has been notably slow this year. Bloomberg data compiled by the Financial Post shows IPOs have raised about $3.5 billion in 2026 so far, a fraction of the $20-plus billion raised in each of the two prior record years. Indian stocks have underperformed, and geopolitical uncertainty tied to the Middle East conflict suppressed appetite further.

NSE's filing lands alongside another potential mega-deal: Mukesh Ambani's Reliance Jio Infocomm, India's largest wireless carrier, was reported by the Financial Times (as cited by CNBC) to be targeting a $4 billion IPO filing by June 19. Prashant Rao, director and head of equity capital markets at Anand Rathi Investment Banking, told CNBC that NSE and Jio combined could account for nearly a third of all mainboard IPO proceeds raised across 104 listings in all of last year.

Questions About Valuation

Existing shareholders are cashing out, not NSE itself. NSE gets nothing from this offering. Buyers are acquiring a minority stake in an exchange that operates in a heavily regulated, politically sensitive environment, one that already blocked NSE's listing for nine years. The co-location settlement resolved the immediate regulatory problem, but it confirmed that governance lapses occurred. Retail investors entering at a $55-billion-plus valuation are effectively pricing in decades of monopoly-level dominance with no margin for regulatory recurrence.

The Financial Post notes that NSE's unlisted shares have actually fallen 13% over the past year in gray-market trading, which is not the trajectory of a hot asset. Gray-market volumes are also thin and over-the-counter, meaning that price is an indication, not a reliable benchmark.

What Comes Next

SEBI's review of the DRHP typically takes two to three months, according to market experts cited by CNBC. NSE is targeting a listing before December 2026. The exchange's 20-bank syndicate is led by Kotak Mahindra Capital Co. and Morgan Stanley India Co., per Mint.

The unresolved question is whether Indian market conditions will recover enough by the time SEBI clears the filing to support a valuation north of ₹5 trillion. If approval comes in August or September, NSE's management will need to decide whether to press forward or wait. The selling shareholders, who include Canadian and Singaporean pension money, will have their own views on timing.