IPOs in India: Everything I Wish Someone Had Told Me Before I Applied for My First One

The first time I applied for an IPO, I genuinely thought it was going to be complicated. I imagined forms, paperwork, maybe even a trip to a bank branch. Turns out, applying for an IPO today takes about two minutes on your phone. The part that actually needs understanding isn't the "how to click apply" bit — it's everything around it: whether you should apply, how allotment actually works, and what happens after you get (or don't get) shares. So let's go through the whole thing, start to finish.

What an IPO Actually Is

IPO stands for Initial Public Offering. It's the process through which a private company sells shares to the public for the first time and gets listed on a stock exchange like the NSE or BSE. Before this, the company's shares are held by founders, employees, and private investors — you and I simply can't buy them. Once it goes public, anyone with a Demat account can own a piece of it.

Companies do this mainly to raise money — for expansion, paying off debt, or sometimes just to give existing investors an exit. As a retail investor, an IPO is your chance to get in at the "offer price" before the stock starts trading freely on the exchange, where the price can move up or down within minutes of listing.

Before You Apply: What You Actually Need

There are only three things standing between you and applying for an IPO:

A Demat and trading account — with any broker: Zerodha, Groww, Upstox, ICICI Direct, whichever you already use.
A UPI ID linked to your bank account — this is how the funds get blocked (not debited) during the application.
Sufficient balance in your bank account — the money isn't taken immediately, but it needs to be available for blocking.

That's it. No separate IPO account, no extra paperwork.

How to Actually Apply

This is the part people overthink. Here's the real sequence:

Step 1: Check the IPO details. Every IPO has a "red herring prospectus" — a document that lays out the company's financials, why it's raising money, and the risks involved. I won't pretend I read the entire thing every time, but I do always check three things: the price band, the company's revenue and profit trend over the last 3 years, and what the money raised is actually going to be used for. If it's mostly for "general corporate purposes" or to let early investors cash out, that's worth noting.

Step 2: Apply through your broker's app or net banking (ASBA). Almost every broker app today has an "IPO" section. You select the IPO, choose the number of lots you want, pick your bid price within the band (or just select "cut-off price," which means you're okay paying whatever the final price turns out to be), and confirm.

Step 3: Approve the UPI mandate. Right after applying, you'll get a mandate request on your UPI app (Google Pay, PhonePe, whatever's linked). You need to approve this within the cut-off time, usually the same day or by the next morning. If you miss approving the mandate, your application doesn't go through — this trips up more people than you'd expect.

Step 4: Wait for allotment. Your money gets blocked (not deducted) in your bank account until allotment is finalized. If you don't get shares, the block is simply released. If you do, the exact amount gets debited.

Understanding "Lots" and Why You Can't Just Buy 5 Shares

IPOs aren't sold per share — they're sold in lots, and a lot is a fixed number of shares decided by the company based on the price band. For a retail investor, there's usually a minimum of one lot and a maximum investment cap of around ₹2 lakh under the retail category. So if a lot costs ₹14,000, you can apply for roughly up to 14 lots before you cross into the "small NII" (non-institutional investor) category, which works differently.

A trick I've used: applying at the "cut-off price" in a single lot as a retail investor, rather than bidding for multiple lots at a lower price, generally doesn't hurt your allotment chances and keeps things simple, since retail allotment in oversubscribed IPOs is done through a computerized lottery system anyway — bidding more doesn't improve your odds of getting picked, it just increases how much gets blocked.

The Allotment Process — Why It Feels Like Luck

This is the part that frustrates first-timers the most. If an IPO is oversubscribed in the retail category (which most popular ones are), allotment isn't first-come-first-served. It's done via a lottery-style computerized process, where each fully-subscribed applicant has an equal chance of getting one lot, regardless of when they applied during the window.

This means applying on Day 1 versus Day 3 makes zero difference to your allotment odds. What matters is subscription numbers — you can actually check live subscription data on the NSE or BSE website while the IPO is open. If retail subscription is, say, 40x, your odds of getting an allotment are genuinely low, no matter how early or how many lots you tried for (within the retail cap).

You can check allotment status a couple of days after the IPO closes, either through the registrar's website (Link Intime or KFin Technologies handle most IPOs) or directly through your broker app.

Listing Day — What Actually Happens

If you get allotted shares, they show up in your Demat account a day or two before listing. On listing day, the stock starts trading on the exchange at whatever price the market determines — this could be way above the issue price (a "listing gain") or, sometimes, below it (listing at a discount).

Here's the honest bit: a strong listing gain doesn't mean the stock is a good long-term hold, and a weak listing doesn't mean the company is bad. Plenty of IPOs that listed flat have gone on to do well over years, and plenty of hyped listings have cooled off hard within months. I try to separate the "should I apply for listing gains" decision from the "do I actually want to own this business" decision — they're not the same question.

Where I Actually Check GMP and Do My Own Analysis

I'll be honest — in the early days I used to just go with whatever GMP number showed up on some random Telegram forward. That's a terrible way to decide anything with your money. Over time I've settled into a small routine of sites I check before applying to any IPO, and I'll share exactly what I use:

Chittorgarh (chittorgarh.com) — this is my first stop, hands down. It has the DRHP/RHP documents, live subscription status split by QIB/NII/Retail, past IPO performance, and allotment status checkers all in one place. If I'm short on time and can only check one site, it's this one.
IPO Central and IPO Watch — I use these mainly for daily GMP tracking. Both update through the day and also show Kostak rates and "Subject to Sauda" rates, which are grey market terms for pre-listing trades. Handy for a quick sentiment check.
InvestorGain and MainboardGMP — similar GMP-tracking sites, but I like cross-checking GMP across two or three sources rather than trusting just one, since grey market numbers can vary depending on who's quoting them.
NSE and BSE's own IPO pages — these are the only "official" places to check live subscription numbers, since that data comes directly from the exchanges rather than an aggregator. I check this on the last day of bidding especially, since subscription numbers can jump sharply in the final hours.
Screener.in — once a company actually lists, this is where I go to track its fundamentals long-term — revenue growth, margins, promoter holding — the stuff that matters way more than the listing-day pop.

My personal rule: GMP tells me sentiment, Chittorgarh's subscription data tells me demand, and the RHP tells me whether the business is actually worth owning. I don't apply unless at least two of these three line up.

How I Apply Through Groww (Since That's What I Use)

I've been applying for IPOs through Groww for a while now, so let me walk you through exactly how it works on there, since the screens can look a little different from what generic guides describe.

Open the Groww app and go to the Stocks tab, then scroll down (or tap the search bar) to find the "IPO" section. It sits right alongside F&O, ETFs, and Mutual Funds.
Tap on "Open IPOs" to see everything currently accepting applications. Groww also shows an "Upcoming" tab where you can actually pre-apply a day or two before the IPO officially opens — I've used this a couple of times for IPOs I already knew I wanted to apply to, so I don't forget on opening day.
Tap "Apply" on the IPO you want, and you'll land on a screen asking you to choose your category — usually "Regular" for retail investors like most of us, or HNI if you're bidding above the retail cap.
Set your lot quantity. Groww shows the lot size directly, and you can only select in multiples of it. I almost always leave the price at "cut-off" rather than manually entering a lower bid — for retail applicants this doesn't hurt your allotment odds and just keeps the process simpler.
Enter your UPI ID — the one linked to the bank account you want funds blocked from. Groww double-checks this and shows you a confirmation before you submit.
Tap "Apply for IPO." You'll get an application number instantly, and Groww shows your application status right there in the same IPO tab going forward — no need to check a separate registrar site unless you want to.
Approve the UPI mandate. This part trips people up the most — the request usually lands within an hour or two on whichever UPI app you use (I use the same one for this every time so I don't miss it), and you need to approve it before the cut-off, which is usually 5 PM on the last bidding day. If you forget to approve it, your entire application gets rejected, no matter how correctly you filled everything else.
Track allotment status directly in the app. Groww shows you a clear "Allotted" or "Not Allotted" status against the IPO once the registrar finalizes it, so I don't even need to visit Link Intime or KFin separately most of the time.

One thing I appreciate about applying through Groww specifically is that the whole thing — application, mandate tracking, allotment status, and even the shares crediting to my Demat — happens inside the same app, so I'm not juggling five different tabs during allotment week.

A Few Things I'd Tell a Beginner

Don't apply just because everyone's talking about it. Hype and heavy subscription numbers don't tell you anything about the company's fundamentals.
Read at least the summary of the prospectus, especially the "risk factors" section — companies are legally required to disclose the ugly stuff there.
Don't over-leverage — never apply with money you need in the near term, since it's blocked for several days and there's no guarantee of allotment or profit.
GMP (Grey Market Premium) is not gospel. It's an unofficial, unregulated indicator of listing sentiment and can be wildly wrong.
Not every IPO deserves an application. It's completely fine to sit out one you don't understand or don't believe in.

Final Thought

Applying for an IPO isn't the hard part — it's a few taps on an app you already use. The actual skill lies in deciding which IPOs are worth your money and your patience, and not mistaking a lottery win (allotment) or a strong listing day for a sound long-term investment. Treat each IPO the same way you'd treat any other stock purchase — read the fundamentals, understand what you're buying, and don't let subscription-number FOMO make the decision for you.

— Shubh
Founder, TheSVibes

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