Much has been made of the strength of India’s primary equity capital markets this year, and for good reason.
In only one other market – the US, inevitably – has more money been raised so far this year by corporates via initial public offerings (IPOs). To be sure, India is a distant second to the world’s largest economy, but it undoubtedly has the wind behind its back.
Wherever one looks, compelling numbers jump out. More than 100 IPOs were completed on India’s main bourses – the National and Bombay stock exchanges – in the third quarter of 2024, marking the highest level of domestic public offerings in a three-month period in history. That takes the number of listings completed in the first nine months to 262 – easily beating any prior calendar-year total.
Or consider the $9.4 billion collectively raised via all those stock sales through September, according to data from Dealogic. Will 2024 beat 2021 – an outlier of a year, when $18.5 billion in new shares were issued by capital-hungry firms?
At any other point in recent history, the answer to that question would surely be ‘no’.
