Before the shares of NSDL were listed, the grey market price was Rs 925, which was a premium of Rs 125 or 15.6%, and many investors had taken that figure as the expected listing gain. The stock debuted below that figure. For the investors who had applied for the A company's first offer of its shares to the public, after which the shares are listed on a stock exchange and can be bought or sold by any investor. Read the full meaning of IPO with the Grey market premium is the rupee gap between an IPO share's unofficial grey market price and its issue price, quoted before listing on NSE or BSE. Read the full meaning of Grey Market Premium (GMP) in their minds, the listing gains turned out to be less than what the quote had suggested.
NSDL was not the only case. As per Business Standard data published on 22 December 2025, Orkla India, Aegis Vopak Terminals, Schloss Bangalore, Vikram Solar, Belrise Industries and Canara HSBC Life Insurance also debuted below their grey market price.
The wider count for the year is also available. Business Standard compiled the data for 2025, and it shows that 56 of the 101 mainboard IPOs which is about 55%, listed below their grey market price. Put differently, a little more than half of the issues did not reach the level that the grey market had quoted for them.
Many families follow the grey market premium closely during the IPO season. The figure is posted on websites and is also shared in messaging groups, and the individual investors often take it as the first indication of the gain on the listing day. Some investors are also deciding whether to apply on the basis of same number.
However, the number is not a forecast, although most of the individual investors are taking it as a forecast of the listing day gain. It is a quote given by a few dealers, and no person is answerable for it when the listing price is lower than the quote. There is no order book for this quote and there is no exchange which keeps a record of it. The tally for 2025 shows the result when such a quote was compared with the actual listing price on the stock exchange.
They also go through some examples from 2025 and early 2026, with dates, in which the quoted premium and the listing price had not matched.
A quote with no exchange behind it
The grey market premium, or GMP, is an unofficial price at which the shares of an IPO are bought and sold before they are listed on the stock exchange.
There is no official order book for these trades. There is also no tape, which means no running record of who bought, who sold and at what price. The number shown on a website has been provided by a small group of dealers, and the investors reading it cannot check how many trades have actually taken place at that number.
The result is that the same IPO can carry different premiums at the same time. An investor who looks at one website in the morning and another in the evening may see two different expected gains for the same issue, and neither site is required to explain the difference.
Neither SEBI is the statutory regulator of India's securities market, with the legal duty to protect investors and to promote and regulate that market. Read the full meaning of SEBI, the A regulated electronic marketplace in Mumbai where buyers and sellers trade shares and other securities at publicly visible prices. Read the full meaning of NSE (National Stock Exchange) nor the BSE Ltd, formerly the Bombay Stock Exchange, is a Mumbai based electronic exchange where shares and other securities are traded under SEBI oversight. Read the full meaning of BSE (Bombay Stock Exchange) publishes any GMP data. The grey market operates outside the regulatory framework of SEBI, so there is no rule on how a quote should be arrived at and no authority to which a wrong quote can be reported. The dealers who give the number do not report it to anyone, and they are not required to correct it after the listing.
Business Standard describes GMP as unregulated and largely driven by the mood among dealers. In its view, this makes the figure an unreliable gauge of how a stock will perform after it is listed. The quote changes as per the mood among the dealers on a particular day, and this mood can change within hours when market opens weaker or when a large issue is being subscribed at the same time.
The figure is therefore a reading of the mood of a few dealers, and it cannot be treated as a forecast. A forecast will have a named person or an institution who has made it, and that person can be asked about it at a later date. A GMP quote has no such person and the tally for 2025 shows that the listing price was lower than the quoted number in many of the issues.
Many families are still treating the figure as an official price of the shares. It is easy to see on the phone, it is updated through the day and it is expressed in rupees and as a percentage of the issue price, which gives it the appearance of a precise measurement. However, the percentage is only as reliable as the few dealers who supplied the number behind it.
Investors who apply for an IPO on the basis of this number are therefore relying on a figure for which no exchange, no regulator and no named person is answerable. The examples below, taken from 2025 and early 2026, show how far apart the quote and the listing price have been in some cases.
Where the quotes and listings parted ways
Crizac is one of the examples from 2025. Before its listing on 9 July 2025, the grey market premium was about Rs 32 over the issue price of Rs 245, which is 13.06%. Business Standard had described the figure on 8 July 2025 as an unregulated indicator that should not be relied on.
Modern Diagnostic, an IPO on the BSE SME platform, showed a similar gap in January 2026. Its grey market premium was Rs 13.5 over the issue price of Rs 90, which is 15%, before the listing on 7 January 2026. The shares listed at a 10% premium, and Business Standard reported that this was below the grey market estimate.
Gabion Technologies is another SME issue where the premium and the listing price were different. The IPO was subscribed 768 times which means the demand from investors was very high. However, the shares listed at a 10% premium and missed the grey market estimates, as per Business Standard on 13 January 2026.
The Gabion case shows that heavy subscription did not secure the premium that the grey market had quoted. Many investors which had applied for the issue would have been expecting a much larger gain on the listing day.
Ahead of its listing on 19 December 2025, the unlisted shares of ICICI Prudential AMC were reported at about Rs 2,565, as per Business Standard. This was a premium of Rs 400, or 18.48%, over the issue price.
Investors who were following these quotes were looking at four different issues across a period of about six months, and in each of them the number shown on the websites and the actual listing were not the same. The dealers who had given the quotes were not asked to explain the difference afterwards, and no exchange recorded what the premium had been on the day before listing.
For ICICI Prudential AMC, the shares listed on 19 December 2025 at Rs 2,600 on the NSE, a premium of 20.09%, which was below the grey market quote reported before listing. What the report shows is the quote that investors were reading before the listing, and that quote was given by the same kind of dealers as in the other cases.
The dates of these examples are also useful to see together. ICICI Prudential AMC was in December 2025, Crizac was in July 2025, and Modern Diagnostic and Gabion Technologies were in January 2026. Mainboard and SME issues are both present in the list, and the large and the small issues have been quoted in same manner, in rupees and as a percentage of the issue price.
Families who had applied to these issues were therefore dealing with a figure that was neither recorded nor checked by anyone. In the case of Gabion Technologies, the very high subscription had been taken as a sign of a large listing gain, and it did not change the result on the listing day.
What analysts and SEBI point to instead
As per Business Standard, analysts expect the outcome of an IPO to be stock-specific. Investors are being advised by market participants to look at the valuation at which the company is offering its shares, the visibility of its earnings and its business fundamentals and not at a single quote from the grey market.
This is a different kind of information from the premium. Valuation and earnings can be read from the offer document of the company which is filed with SEBI and is available to every investor. The grey market quote, on the other hand, has no such document behind it, and no one can be asked later how it was arrived at.
Many individual investors are now comparing both the sources before they decide on an application. Some of them are still giving more weight to the premium, since it is shown in rupees and is easy to follow, while the offer document runs to several hundred pages and takes much more time to read.
SEBI has taken a clear position on the grey market in its investor guide on IPOs. The guide advises investors not to deal in the black market or the grey market. It does not describe the premium as an indicator that can be used with care, and it does not say how a quote can be checked.
Alongside this, regulator has issued a warning aimed at the fringes of the same market. In its press release of April 2025, SEBI cautioned the public about scamsters who offer "sure shot allocation of IPO". In simple words, these are individuals who claim that they can secure shares in an issue for a payment, which no one can legally guarantee, since allotment depends on the application process and the demand for the issue.
The warning is directed at those who approach investors with such offers, and it shows the kind of activity that grows around the grey market, where there is no exchange, no recorded trade and no authority to which a complaint can be made. The regulator's guide, for its part, says that investors should not deal there at all.
