By Anjana Therese Antony
India is probably going to have the third consecutive year of successful initial public offering (IPOs), which will create a new record for the country, said Kamlesh Chandra Varshney, whole-time member, the Securities and Exchange Board of India’s (Sebi). It is not very often in the history of India that the country had two consecutive years of good IPOs, he said at the annual convention of the Association of Investment Bankers of India.
Till December in FY26, 413 companies raised ₹2.14 lakh crores, which is higher than the ₹2.08 lakh crores raised in the year-ago period and over ₹83,000 crores raised in FY24. By the end of March, the figure will be more than what the companies raised in the previous fiscal, he said. “In addition, there is a lot of interest from other corporates to go public.”
He also added that the market regulator has issued 157 observation letters between April 2024 and December 2025. As on December 31, 2025, there are 98 offer documents under process worth almost ₹95,000 crores with Sebi. For the same time period, 115 observations were issued, but funds are yet to be raised, Varshney said.
During April-October, the post-listing performance of stocks remained strong, Varshney said. Mainboard IPOs generated cumulative gains of 22% over the total issue size, he added.
Out of 72 mainboard IPOs during April-October, 5 saw more than 50% returns on the day of listing, 6 saw 20-50% returns, and 18 stocks got 10-20%. While 29 IPOs saw 0-10% on the day of listing during these seven months, the remaining 14 made negative returns.
If one is to look at the returns of these IPOs till date, 6 rose over 50%, 21 made 20-50% returns, and 10 are up 10-20%. The number of companies having negative returns increased to 27, Varshney said.
Security Markets Code
The Code was tabled to the Parliament and it has gone to the standing committee of finance which will make their recommendation to the government, said Varshney. He expects the code to be elected and if so, the regulator can delegate its functions to market infrastructure institutions and self-regulating organisations. “We do need other people to help SEBI in regulatory function,” Varshney said.
The Code is aimed at consolidating the provisions of SEBI Act, 1992, Depositories Act, 1996, Securities Contracts (Regulation) Act, 1956 and Government Securities Act, 2007 into a rationalized single Securities Markets Code.