NSE set to list in one of India’s largest IPOs after a decade of regulatory delays

The entity that runs India’s stock market is about to become a stock on India’s market. The National Stock Exchange of India Ltd (NSE) has filed its Draft Red Herring Prospectus (DRHP) with the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI), setting the stage for what could be one of the country’s largest-ever initial public offerings.

The exchange is targeting a listing before December 2026, with expected proceeds in the range of ₹20,000 to ₹30,000 crore. The NSE’s implied pre-IPO valuation sits between ₹4.75 lakh crore and ₹5.05 lakh crore, which would place it among the most valuable companies on its own exchange.

A decade in the making

The NSE has been trying to go public for nearly ten years, with regulatory issues first surfacing in 2016 that kept the listing in limbo. The breakthrough came when NSE proposed settling those legacy regulatory cases with SEBI for approximately ₹1,491 crore. That settlement effectively cleared the runway for the DRHP filing, which landed around June 17, 2026.

The offering is expected to be structured as a pure Offer for Sale (OFS), meaning the NSE itself won’t be raising fresh capital. Instead, existing shareholders will sell down portions of their stakes. The State Bank of India, Singapore’s Temasek, Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (CPPIB), Life Insurance Corporation (LIC), and ChrysCapital are all expected to participate in the sell-down.

The numbers behind the monopoly

The exchange handles 93.6% of India’s equity cash market. In derivatives trading, its share is 99%. The Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE), India’s other major exchange, has been publicly listed since 2017 and operates in NSE’s considerable shadow.

NSE reported revenue of ₹17,141 crore for fiscal year 2025, with a net profit margin of roughly 58%. In the unlisted market, NSE shares have recently changed hands at valuations hovering around ₹2,000 to ₹2,054.

What this means for investors

The risks are worth sizing up carefully. Regulatory risk sits at the top of the list. SEBI has shown willingness to intervene in market structure decisions, including recent moves around derivatives trading rules that directly impact exchange revenues. An exchange that derives 99% market share in derivatives is inherently exposed to any policy shift in that segment.

At the upper end of the projected range, ₹5.05 lakh crore represents a significant premium to most global exchange operators on a price-to-earnings basis. BSE has been gaining some ground in select segments, and regulatory encouragement of competition could gradually erode NSE’s near-monopoly status.

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