Initial Public Offer or IPO is a process by which a company or a shareholder in that company raises money from investors by selling shares. Investors usually bid for shares that the company is selling in a certain price band.

For instance, there is a company called Fashion Dresses Private Limited that has a chain of retail shops across Maharashtra selling apparels. Now, it wants to expand its business to Gujarat and needs money.

The company can explore various avenues such as going to a bank, inviting private equity investors, etc. One of the ways is to go public. Going public means, it will approach the stock markets and sell a part of stake in the company by the process called IPO.

What is allotment of shares?

IPO is a long drawn process. In this process, when investors have bid for the shares, a company needs to ‘allot’ the shares to those bidders. For this, companies usually hire a registrar whose job is to keep records of investor bids, allot shares to successful bidders and then transfer those shares.

There are two largest registrars in the country namely KFin Technologies and Link Intime. There are few others such as Bigshare Services that are also employed by companies.

Allotment of shares usually happens six to eight days after the bidding for IPO has closed. Companies and registrars usually announce the date of allotment ahead of the IPO bidding starts.

What is allotment status?

Many a times the number of bids for share sale is much more than the number of shares that are available. This leads to oversubscription. In such a case, some investors will be allotted shares while others will get refunds.

In such cases, registrars use a certain formula to decide which investors will get shares and who will get refunds. The status of whether an investor is getting an allotment or not is known as allotment status.

How to check status?

There are various ways one can check the IPO allotment status. You can visit the website of National Stock Exchange (NSE), BSE or the registrar of the IPO to check allotment status.

The registrar, exchanges and depositories such as Central Depository Services Limited (CDSL) and National Securities Depository Limited (NSDL) also inform you of the allotment status by e-mail and SMS.

NSE

- Visit: https://www1.nseindia.com/products/dynaContent/equities/ipos/ipo_login.jsp and sign up to create an account.

- After creating the account, log in to the account by entering username and password.

- You can check the status now.

BSE

-Visit: https://www.bseindia.com/investors/appli_check.aspx

- Select Equity.

- Open drop down menu to enter the recent IPOs and select the one you applied for.

- Enter either application number or PAN number.

- Check captcha that says I am not a robot.

- Click on search. You will get the details.

Registrars

Every registrar’s website has a section dedicated for checking allotment status of IPOs. Find out the name of registrar of the company whose shares you bid for.

-Visit https://ris.kfintech.com/ipostatus/ if the registrar is KFin Technologies and https://linkintime.co.in/mipo/ipoallotment.html if the registrar is Link Intime. For Bigshare Services, the link is https://www.bigshareonline.com/ipo_Allotment.html . For any other registrar, visit their website.

- Follow on screen instructions to check allotment status. Usually, after you select the IPO’s name, you will either be asked to furnish PAN or demat account number or application number. After submitting the details, the system will let you know your IPO allotment status.

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