Pop Goes The Listing

With gains halved and sentiment shaky, IPOs struggle to draw retail and HNI interest

- SUNDAR SETHURAMAN

The individual investor rush that drove public offerings (IPOs) last year is missing in 2025 — at least if application volumes are anything to go by. The first 28 IPOs this year have averaged just 1.22 million retail applications, down 35.5 per cent from the 1.9 million across 91 IPOs in 2024. High networth individual (HNI) participation has dropped as well, down 31 per cent per issue.

The drop-off began after January. Retail bids averaged 3.2 million that month but fell to just 780,000 between February and June. HNI applications shrank from 235,000 to 71,500 in the same period. Eight recent IPOs failed to attract even 10,000 HNI forms.