IPO subscription explained
An IPO's shares are divided into buckets for different investor types. 'Subscription' is how many times each bucket was bid for.
Updated 1 September 2026
Every IPO reserves a fixed share of the offer for each category of investor. As bids come in, the exchanges publish, several times a day, how many times each bucket has been applied for. "12x subscribed" for a bucket means the demand there was twelve times the number of shares on offer.
The buckets
- QIB — Qualified Institutional Buyers. Mutual funds, insurers, banks, FIIs. Usually up to 50% of a mainboard book-built issue. QIB bids mostly arrive on the last day and cannot be withdrawn.
- NII / HNI — Non-Institutional Investors. Anyone applying for more than ₹2 lakh. Split into sNII (₹2–10 lakh) and bNII (above ₹10 lakh), each with its own sub-quota. Typically 15%.
- Retail (RII). Individuals applying up to ₹2 lakh. Typically 35%. Allotment here is by lottery when oversubscribed.
- Employee / Shareholder. Some issues carve out a small reserved portion, often at a discount.
- Anchor. Large institutions allotted the day before the IPO opens, at the issue price, with a lock-in. Anchor take-up is an early confidence signal.
Reading the numbers
Strong QIB and NII demand is often read as institutional and high-net-worth conviction. A weak retail number can signal low public interest. But subscription is about demand for allotment, not a promise of a listing gain — heavily subscribed issues have listed flat, and lightly subscribed ones have risen. Read it together with the price band and the RHP, not on its own.
On Platform
The subscription tracker shows the live QIB / NII / retail / total figures for every open and just-closed IPO, auto-refreshing, with the source and timestamp. Figures move fastest in the final hours before close.
Related reading
Platform is an independent aggregator, not affiliated with NSE, BSE, SEBI or any registrar. This article is general information, not investment advice. See the disclaimer.