How to invest in an IPO?

Initial Public Offer or an IPO is the process through which privately-held companies list their shares on the stock market. The IPO or the public issue is typically open for subscription for three days. During this period, various categories of investors—retail investors, high net-worth individuals, mutual funds, foreign portfolio investors—can bid for the shares within a price band set by the company.

Applying for an IPO is pretty straight forward. There’s no paperwork involved, as the process is completely online. All you need is a demat account and a Unified Payments Interface (UPI) id. On Upstox, the process is really simple! Here’s how you subscribe to an IPO via Upstox.

Step 1
Go to https://invest.upstox.com/ipo, select the option to invest in IPOs, and pick the issue of choice by clicking on the ‘Details’ button. 

Step 2
Click on the Details button, which will take you to the sign-in screen, where you need to enter your UCC and PAN linked with your Upstox account. 

Step 3
The next screen will require you to enter your year of birth for verification. 

Step 4
You will then be directed to a summary page of the public issue. Once you’ve read through the details, please click on the ‘Place bid’ button.

Step 5
You will then see a screen where you need to enter your UPI id and select your investor category. If you’re an existing shareholder, choose ‘Shareholder’, else choose ‘Individual investor’. Then click ‘Continue’.

Step 6

There are a few important things to keep in mind for this step. 

1. An investor can bid for shares at any price within the IPO’s price band. In the case of Happiest Minds, the price band is set at ₹165–166, so you can bid at either ₹165 or ₹166. 

2. You can also choose to bid at the ‘cut-off’ price. That way, you are bidding at whatever price the issuer finally decides to allot the shares.

3. Be mindful of the quantity of shares you can bid for. Every issue has a lot size, i.e. the minimum number of shares you have to purchase. Higher quantities of the share have to be in multiples of the lot size. For example, the Happiest Minds Technologies IPO has a lot size of 90 shares. So one can bid in multiples of 90 (e.g. 90, 180, 270, etc). 

Once you have entered your bid, please click on ‘Continue’.

Step 7
This is the order confirmation screen. Verify the order details and click ‘Place order’.

Step 8: Once done, you will receive an SMS that confirms your bid while requesting you to accept the mandate on your UPI app. 

That’s it! The share allotment process takes around a week and you will be intimated when the shares are alloted.

It’s important to note that it is possible you are allotted fewer or no shares.The more the issue is oversubscribed, the lower are the odds of the shares being allotted to you. That said, in case you aren’t allotted the shares, your bidding amount gets unblocked in your bank account.

We hope you found the article useful and now have all the information needed to invest in an IPO via Upstox. Visit https://invest.upstox.com/ipo/ to apply for the latest IPOs.

Happy investing!

Disclaimer: Investments in the securities market are subject to market risk, please read all the related documents before investing.

The above article is purely academic in nature to educate about basic trading concepts & should not be construed as any opinion or advice to invest or deal based on it.