MUMBAI: The National Stock Exchange (NSE) has floated requests for proposal (RFPs) to nearly two dozen investment banks and law firms to join its IPO that has been in the making for a decade. At around $2.5 billion, it will be among the largest ever issues.
The largest stock exchange, valued at over Rs 5.5 trillion according to the prevailing price of its unlisted shares in the gray market, has been seeking to go public since early 2016 but many unresolved issues including the headline grabbing co-location case held Sebi back from greenlighting the share sale plan.
Late last month, Sebi had given its no-objection certificate to the exchange for the IPO. In the run-up to the Sebi nod, the NSE had settled the co-location case with the regulator, agreeing to pay around Rs 1,400 crore.
The planned share sale will be entirely an offer for sale, with existing shareholders divesting about 4-4.5% of their combined shareholding. Based on prices in the unlisted market of over Rs 2,000/share, the IPO could raise around $2.5 billion. IDBI Bank, LIC, SBI and Singapore’s Temasek are among some of the firm’s institutional shareholders who will be pairing their stakes.
"The NSE has started the selection process earlier this week for IPO advisors and has reached out to around 20 investment banks and around 10 law firms for the same,” a source in the i-banking space told TNIE.
Another source said the NSE is likely to announce the names by the middle of March so that it can file the draft papers with Sebi by May or early June.
After the February 6 Sebi no-objection certificate for the IPO, the exchange had formed an IPO committee under its chairman and then selected the British firm Rothschild’s as an independent advisor to oversee the share sale process.
Rothschild’s is expected to advise the NSE management to lead a transparent, governance-driven process to select i-bankers, legal counsels, and other intermediaries for the IPO.
The members of the re-constituted IPO committee are Tablesh Pandey, chairperson (non-independent director), and members Srinivas Injeti, Mamata Biswal, retired judge Abhilasha Kumari, G Sivakumar (all public interest directors of the NSE) and the bourse chief executive Ashishkumar Chauhan.
The committee will spearhead the listing process, beginning with finalising the criteria for appointing merchant bankers and legal advisors to prepare the draft red herring prospectus which is likely to be filed by March, the bourse said.
The NSE was established in 1992 and started operations in 1994 as the country’s first electronic stock exchange. According to its 2025 annual, it had 11.3 crore unique registered investors (up by 23% from 2024) and around 22 crore investor accounts, with 2,720 companies listed on its platform.
A key operational challenge could be the NSE’s swelling shareholder base of 1.91 lakh which is the largest among unlisted companies. The number of shareholders sharply rose from around 5,000 in December 2023, 20,500 in December 2024, and nearly 1.84 lakh by December 2025.
Its consolidated revenue stood at Rs 19,177 crore, up 17% over fiscal 2024 and profit after tax of Rs 12,188 crore, which was 47% more than the previous year.
However, the NSE had reported a sharp 37% plunge in net income at Rs 2,408 crore in the December 2025 quarter, while total income fell 9% to Rs 4,395 crore. But on a sequential basis, net profit rose 15%, while total income grew 6%. Operating margin declined 16% to Rs 2,851 crore.
The NSE made its first attempt to list in 2016, but was advised to withdraw the plan as regulatory probes gathered pace over co-location and dark fibre cases. The listing of the exchange even reached the Delhi High Court.
While approval from Sebi’s high-powered advisory committee on settlement was earlier seen as a prerequisite for granting a no-objection certificate, the regulator issued the NoC without waiting for a formal go-ahead from the panel. This decision was taken amid prolonged delays and after key Sebi departments, in principle, agreed to settle the cases under the consent mechanism.
On June 20, 2025, the NSE had filed an application with Sebi by agreeing to pay around Rs 1,400 crore as settlement for the co-location and dark fibre cases.
In its latest financial disclosures released in November 2025, the NSE made a provision of Rs 1,297 crore, over and above the Rs 100 crore already deposited with Sebi in compliance with a SAT order passed in 2023.