Twenty IPOs Open as SME Issues Crowd the Tape

Twenty companies open IPOs in the week beginning September 28, seeking Rs 1,292.12 crore as 20 other firms prepare to list. Four of the new issues are mainboard deals. The other 16 are SME offers.

Those SME books account for Rs 697.20 crore, more than the Rs 594.92 crore sought on the mainboard. September’s mainboard issues have already taken Rs 39,255.16 crore. The diary is crowded. The new cheques are not.

Twenty New Issues Raise Rs 1,292 Crore

The week beginning September 28 is being sold as another busy primary-market stretch, and the headcount is real. Twenty maiden public issues open for subscription, and twenty companies are due to start trading between September 28 and October 1. Put the rupees next to the names, and the week looks different.

All 20 new issues together want Rs 1,292.12 crore. Moneyview, the Bengaluru fintech whose book opened on September 24 and closes on September 28, is seeking Rs 1,091.68 crore on its own, close to that entire new slate. The fresh calendar is a volume event. The leftover book is where the larger cheque still sits.

MAINBOARD ISSUES OPENING THIS WEEK

Shah Investor’s Home, an Ahmedabad retail broker, is selling 53.99 lakh fresh shares and no offer-for-sale. The lot is 85 shares, so a retail bid costs Rs 14,195 at the cap. SRIT India, a Bengaluru IT firm, is the largest of the four, a 1.68-crore-share fresh issue. Vishal Nirmiti, a civil engineering and construction company, mixes a Rs 145 crore fresh issue with a Rs 33 crore offer-for-sale. Nityas Gems & Jewellery, a diamond-studded gold maker, is selling 1.44 crore shares.

Both Shah Investor’s Home and SRIT India are 100 percent fresh issues. That is useful for the companies. It is not the same as a week that moves tens of thousands of crore through the tape.

The SME Queue Behind the Headlines

Sixteen of the 20 new issues sit on the BSE SME or NSE Emerge platforms, and they want more money this week than the mainboard names. That mix is the part the headcount hides. The SME route has been the volume engine of the listing boom, even after the regulator tightened the gates.

From July 1, 2025, SME issuers have had to show operating profit of at least Rs 1 crore in two of the previous three years, promoters have been capped at one-fifth of the issue, and the minimum application has been Rs 2 lakh. The point of those rules was to slow the retail rush that used to produce 100-times books and first-day pops. The issues kept coming anyway.

An RBI note on the earlier surge found that SME IPO counts rose 87 percent in 2024-25 from 2022-23. The week beginning September 28 is that machine still running, just with smaller average tickets and a colder aftermarket.

SME ISSUES OPENING BETWEEN SEPTEMBER 28 AND 30

• September 28: Acme Universal Safezone 9 (Rs 35.93 crore), Shree TNB Polymers (Rs 31.80 crore), Pind Hospitality (Rs 17.82 crore) and Shivchem Agro (Rs 14.01 crore).
• September 29: Black Opal Consultants (Rs 55.08 crore), EverestIMS Technologies (Rs 48.45 crore), Vans Electroengineerings (Rs 33.98 crore) and Papadmalji Agro Foods (Rs 20.18 crore).
• September 30: Acme India Industries (Rs 121.69 crore), Paramount Syntex (Rs 81.78 crore), Dove Soft (Rs 73.26 crore), Omara Ventures India (Rs 41.98 crore), Eventions (Rs 38.11 crore), TNA Solutions (Rs 37.85 crore), SJP Ultrasonics (Rs 23.45 crore) and Sollfege Smart Electronics (Rs 21.78 crore).

Acme India Industries, at Rs 121.69 crore, is the largest SME book in the slate and still smaller than SRIT India’s mainboard issue. Steptrade Capital, an AIF that tracks the segment, counted about 43 SME companies raising Rs 1,702 crore in September, up from 23 companies and Rs 1,156 crore in August. Across the first nine months of 2026, about 170 small companies have raised more than Rs 7,500 crore.

Puneet Singhania, wholetime director at Master Capital Services, said about half of the SME companies listed in 2026 are trading below their offer price. Pankaj Agrawal, director at Valmiki Leela Capital, said 23 of the 30 SME IPOs listed early in the year opened below the issue price, with an average listing gain of about 3 percent.

The focus is gradually moving beyond listing-day gains to the company’s valuation, earnings and growth potential.

Pankaj Agrawal, Director, Valmiki Leela Capital

Kresha Gupta, director and fund manager at Steptrade Capital, said investors sold shares worth Rs 5,674 crore in the secondary market during July and August while putting around Rs 12,618 crore into IPOs. That rotation is the hidden bid under a 16-name SME queue: cash leaving listed stocks to fund new ones, including names most investors will not be able to trade easily after listing.

Moneyview’s Book Fills as Acevector Stalls

The live books from late September show the split more clearly than any calendar. Moneyview and A-One Steels India, both opened on September 24, close on September 28. Acevector, Runwal Enterprises, Orient Cables and German Green Steel & Power, opened on September 25, close on September 29.

SUBSCRIPTION ON THE BOOKS STILL OPEN

Moneyview’s Rs 1,091.68 crore book is a fresh issue of Rs 750 crore plus an offer-for-sale of Rs 341.68 crore. The lot is 441 shares, so a retail bid is Rs 14,994 at the cap. Allotment is due on September 29, with listing on October 1. Unofficial grey-market quotes on September 28 put a premium of about Rs 14 over the Rs 34 cap, or about 41 percent. Grey-market premiums are unregulated and do not set the listing price.

Acevector, the parent of Snapdeal, had bids for 23 percent of its issue as of the same snapshot, with unofficial premiums around zero. Runwal Enterprises, which cut its fresh issue plan to Rs 500 crore from an earlier Rs 1,000 crore, was at 42 percent. Orient Cables and German Green Steel & Power cleared 1 times and sit in a milder 1.7 to 2.0 times band. A-One Steels India was at 1.35 times heading into its last session.

That is not a single “IPO market.” It is two queues using the same three-day window. One has a fintech with a Rs 14,994 lot and a six-times book. The other has a once-famous e-commerce parent that has not filled a quarter of its issue.

How September Already Banked Rs 39,255 Crore

Calendar 2026 was already a heavy year before this week’s 20 new names appeared. Ninety-six companies have launched mainboard IPOs, raising Rs 1,12,928.6 crore. Thirty-four of those issues, worth Rs 39,255.16 crore, came in September. Add the SME side and September runs to 86 companies and Rs 41,496.46 crore, of which 52 SME issues raised Rs 2,241.3 crore. For the year, 179 SME companies have raised Rs 8,396.52 crore.

The year to March 2026, the last full fiscal count, had already broken records. SEBI’s annual report said newly listed companies rose to 366 from 320, SME listings reached a historic peak of 257 from 241, and 109 mainboard IPOs raised Rs 1.8 lakh crore, up 8.9 percent. Median mainboard size rose to Rs 760 crore from Rs 740 crore. More listings, not much more size at the middle of the book.

PRIME Database Group, which tracks primary-market deals, said it was the first time India had seen two consecutive years of record IPO fundraising. Average listing gain, using the closing price on listing day, fell to 8 percent from 30 percent. Retail applications dropped to 12.87 lakh from 21.31 lakh. Only 37 of 108 mainboard IPOs were trading above the issue price as of March 27, 2026, and the average return had slipped to minus 7 percent, ending a run of positive average returns that stretched from 2020-21 through 2024-25.

In the past, a strong IPO year almost always was succeeded by a lull lasting two to three years.

Pranav Haldea, Managing Director, PRIME Database Group, in a March 31, 2026 note

On the SME platform, PRIME recorded 254 issues collecting Rs 10,944 crore in the year to March 2026, up 20 percent from Rs 9,120 crore. Average issue size had risen to Rs 43 crore from Rs 14 crore in 2021-22. Average listing gain fell to 11 percent from 46 percent. Grant Thornton’s 9-month FY26 snapshot put the average annual return of minus 2 percent on listed mainboard IPOs, a different window from the 8 percent listing-day figure and a reminder that the pop, when it still appears, has not been sticking.

THE YEAR BEHIND THE 20-IPO HEADLINE

• Calendar 2026 mainboard: 96 companies, Rs 1,12,928.6 crore, of which September’s 34 issues took Rs 39,255.16 crore.
• Calendar 2026 SME: 179 companies, Rs 8,396.52 crore, including 52 September issues worth Rs 2,241.3 crore.
• Year to March 2026: 109 mainboard IPOs, Rs 1.8 lakh crore; 257 SME listings, a SEBI record.
• Listing-day pop: 8 percent average on mainboard in the year to March 2026, down from 30 percent the year before.

Bhavesh Shah, managing director and head of investment banking at Equirus Capital, said India raised about Rs 2 lakh crore through IPOs in the 2000-2010 decade and a similar Rs 2 lakh crore in 2010-2020, and has already raised more than Rs 6 lakh crore in the current decade. The week’s 20 new issues do not move that decade total. They fill the gaps between the large books.

Listing Day Meets a 20-Name Queue

Supply does not stop at the bid window. Twenty companies are scheduled to begin trading between September 28 and October 1, seven on the mainboard and 13 on SME platforms. Several will list while other books are still open, so the same pool of IPO cash is being asked to bid and to absorb new paper at the same time.

LISTING DATES BETWEEN SEPTEMBER 28 AND OCTOBER 1

1. September 28: Robokidz Eduventures, FX Multitech and Vivekanand Cotspin begin trading on BSE SME.
2. September 29: Varmora Granito, a tiles maker, is the first mainboard debut of the stretch; Anand Seamless and Himalaya Nutravedics India list on SME platforms.
3. September 30: Elevate Campuses, Adroit Industries (India), ArMee Infotech and Swastika Infra list on the mainboard. Liqvd Digital India, Unitec Fibres and SK Offset debut on BSE SME; Pooja Logistics and Coreintegra Consulting Services debut on NSE Emerge.
4. October 1: Moneyview and A-One Steels India list on the mainboard. Green Asia Impex lists on NSE Emerge; Peshwa Wheat and Roopa Screen list on BSE SME.

Gupta at Steptrade said 31 SME companies migrated to the mainboard in 2026, compared with 30 in 2025. Migration is still a path. It is no longer a reason to treat every SME lot as a ticket to a bigger exchange. Singhania said exchanges have raised size and profit tests for companies that want to move up, after speculation in the riskier names ran hot.

Unofficial premiums on names due to list in this stretch sit all over the map. Adroit Industries has been quoted around a 43 percent premium. Varmora Granito has been quoted around zero. Those quotes can vanish before the opening bell, and they say nothing about the 13 SME names that will also land on the tape.

Jio’s October Filing Hangs Over the Calendar

Nikhil Khandelwal, managing director at Systematix Group, said on September 7 that calendar 2026 could see Rs 2.4 to 2.5 lakh crore raised through IPOs, and that “accounting for just Jio, we’ll be crossing the 2024 calendar mark.” He projected Rs 50,000 crore of issuance in October, led by Reliance Jio’s offering and other large deals including Hero. That single month’s projected supply is about 39 times the Rs 1,292.12 crore sought by this week’s 20 new issues.

Jio Platforms filed its draft prospectus on June 19, 2026, as a fresh issue of up to 27 crore shares with no offer-for-sale. Figures circulating around the filing put the raise near Rs 37,700 crore ($3.8 billion), with a large slice earmarked to prepay foreign-currency debt at the telecom unit. Mukesh Ambani told shareholders that day that the Jio board had approved the draft.

Khandelwal said the first half of 2026 was quiet, around Rs 25,000 to 30,000 crore across IPOs by June, before about Rs 50,000 crore was raised in July and August. From January to August he counted 61 IPOs raising Rs 75,000 crore. Average listing gains were 1.8 percent from January to June and more than 22 percent from July. He called the later pickup institutionally driven. Foreign portfolio investors, he said, still put Rs 36,000 to 40,000 crore into IPO anchor books from January to August even while selling in the secondary market. About 120 companies already had approval to launch.

SEBI had also given issuers whose approvals were expiring an extension until September, and permission to cut issue size by up to 50 percent rather than the usual 20 percent. That is one reason a week can look stuffed with small names: books that waited out a softer tape are now sharing a window with the ordinary SME flow, just as a Jio-sized issue sits in the next month’s diary.

A Queue Ranked by Grey Premiums

Public argument around these issues on September 28 is not about Shah Investor’s Home’s three-decade broking book, or about whether Acevector’s e-commerce parent still has a path. It is a ranked list of unofficial premiums. Moneyview and Orient Cables sit at the top of that list. Acevector and Varmora sit at the bottom. People picking among the open books name the two richest premiums and leave the 23 percent book alone.

That ranking is how scarce IPO cash is being sorted this week, and it is a poor substitute for the credit work the new SME rules were meant to force. A 16-name SME slate with Rs 2 lakh minimums still draws bids when a premium is quoted. It draws fewer when the quote is zero, which is the same behaviour the 2024-25 boom trained, only with smaller pops attached.

Haldea’s warning from March still hangs over the tape: India has now strung together two record years, a pattern that used to be followed by a lull. The week beginning September 28 does not test that call. Jio’s October window might. Until then the primary market is doing something quieter, and easier to miss if you only count the 20 new names. It is clearing a backlog of small issues after the month’s large cheques have already cleared, and it is asking retail accounts to fund both the leftovers and the listing-day supply at once.

Shah Investor’s Home and SRIT India open on September 28. Moneyview and A-One Steels close the same day. Acevector still has until September 29 to find the other 77 percent of its book.

Disclaimer: This article is news reporting and analysis of India’s primary market for information only. It is not investment advice, a recommendation to apply for any IPO, or a solicitation to buy or sell any security, including the mainboard and SME issues named above. Readers should consult a SEBI-registered investment adviser or other qualified financial professional, and should read each offer document, before placing a bid or trading a newly listed share. Figures, subscription tallies, grey-market quotes and listing dates reflect the sources cited as of September 28, 2026, and can change as books close and exchanges set final schedules.