IPO words, in plain language.

The moment a company offers its shares to the public for the first time and its shares begin trading on a stock exchange. The destination of everything else on this page.

The listing venues built for smaller companies — NSE Emerge and BSE SME. They ask for less capital and lighter formalities than the Mainboard, and require a market maker to keep shares tradeable.

The exchange's main listing venue, for larger companies. Stricter profit and size tests, a wider investor base, heavier ongoing obligations.

The big book: the draft offer document filed for public and regulatory scrutiny before an IPO. It tells the company's whole story — business, numbers, risks — and everything in it must be defensible.

The refined DRHP, filed after observations are addressed and carrying the price band. It goes to investors; the final version becomes the prospectus.

The licensed intermediary that leads the IPO — structuring the offer, drafting the document, and taking it to investors. Appointing the right one is one of the most consequential decisions of the journey.

The licensed agency that processes applications and allots shares to investors when the offer closes. Boring, essential, and chosen with care.

A licensed participant obligated to keep buying and selling an SME platform company's shares after listing, so they remain tradeable. Every SME listing needs one.

Shares the company creates and sells in the IPO, raising new money that goes into the company itself — typically for growth, equipment, or working capital.

Shares existing shareholders sell in the IPO. The money goes to those shareholders, not into the company. Many offers mix a fresh issue with an OFS.

Large institutional investors invited to commit a day before the offer opens. Their names on the list signal confidence to everyone else.

The way the price is discovered: investors bid within a price band, and demand determines the final price within it. Most IPOs are priced this way rather than at a fixed rate.

The floor-and-ceiling price range published with the RHP. Investors bid at or within it, and the final price lands inside.

The final price within the band at which shares are actually allotted, once the book is built.

The portion of the offer that promoters must bring in themselves, before public money is accepted. Skin in the game, required by regulation.

A legally required stretch after listing during which specified shares — including promoters' — cannot be sold. It aligns the promoters' fate with the company's.

The merchant banker's legal commitment to take up unsold shares if the public does not. In a well-run offer it rarely comes to that, but the commitment is what lets an offer go to market with confidence.

The formal allocation of shares to investors after the offer closes — followed, a day or so later, by the moment everything was for.

The first day the company's shares trade on the exchange. A milestone, not a finish line — the obligations of being listed begin here and never stop.

The systematic checking of everything the company claims — numbers, documents, legal standing — before it goes into the offer document. Exhausting by design; the companies that prepared their papers early barely feel it.