What is IPO subscription (times subscribed)?

Subscription tells you how much demand an IPO got compared with the shares on offer. A subscription of 10 times means investors bid for ten times the shares available.

How it is worked out

Subscription is the number of shares bid for divided by the number of shares offered. If 1 crore shares are offered and bids come in for 5 crore shares, the IPO is subscribed 5 times. Under 1 time means fewer bids than shares on offer.

Overall and by category

The exchanges publish subscription for each category: QIB, NII (HNI) and retail, and sometimes employee or shareholder quotas. The overall figure combines them, but it hides differences: an IPO can be subscribed 80 times overall and only 5 times in retail.

For a retail applicant the retail figure matters most, because it decides your chance of an allotment. See the guide on how allotment works.

Why the last day matters

Institutional bids usually arrive on the last day of bidding, so QIB and overall subscription can jump sharply late in the day. Early figures understate where an IPO will end up, and the final numbers are published after bidding closes.

What subscription does not tell you

A heavily subscribed IPO is not guaranteed to list higher, and a weakly subscribed one is not guaranteed to list lower. It is one signal among many, alongside the grey market premium, the company's fundamentals and the market's mood on listing day.

IPO Khata shows overall and category subscription on every IPO's page, with a chart of how it moved day by day. It is information, not advice.

Related guides

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Information, not investment advice. GMP is an unofficial grey-market indicator; figures come from public sources (InvestorGain) and may be late or wrong. Not registered with or affiliated to SEBI, the exchanges, the registrars or InvestorGain.