India's National Stock Exchange (NSE) received bids worth more than $10 billion for its $2.3 billion initial public offering, valuing the exchange above several U.S. peers including Nasdaq.

The IPO secured bids for 505.81 million shares on Monday, 5.7 times the 88.64 million shares on offer, driven by demand from institutional and high-net-worth investors. As part of the offering, NSE raised 67.5 billion rupees ($704 million) last week from anchor investors including the Monetary Authority of Singapore, the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority and India's Life Insurance Corporation of India.

The listing is India's biggest this year and the second largest ever, after Hyundai Motor India's $3.3 billion share offer in 2024. The IPO had been in the works since 2016.

NSE is valued at a price-to-earnings ratio of 42.9 times, based on the upper end of the IPO price band and earnings per share for the year ended in March 2026, according to a report by Indian brokerage Yes Securities. By comparison, U.S. stock exchange companies trade at a price-to-earnings ratio of less than 24 times: Nasdaq trades at 23.6 times and Intercontinental Exchange at 21.9 times, according to LSEG data.

NSE holds a 93% share of India's cash market and accounts for nearly 100% of the country's equity futures trading, along with 75% of equity options trading, according to the IPO filing. India's total equity market capitalization stands at around 492 trillion rupees ($5.1 trillion), placing it among the top 10 equity markets globally.

Indian brokerage Geojit Financial Services said in a Sept. 16 report that NSE's "asset-light business model enables consistently high margins and cash generation," and that growing capital market participation and "increasing financialization" in India give the exchange "a strong long-term growth runway."

According to India's economic survey released earlier this year, the share of equity and mutual funds in annual household financial savings rose to 15.2% in the financial year ending March 2025, up from 2% in the financial year ending March 2012. Sundararaman Ramamurthy, managing director of the Bombay Stock Exchange, a competitor of NSE, said earlier this year that 35 million Indian investors registered with his platform in 2025 and that a "significant amount of population" had yet to enter capital markets.

Source: CNBC

#IPO