Why the NSE IPO may not create wealth like BSE’s did

The National Stock Exchange (NSE) filed IPO papers with SEBI last week, nearly a decade after its first attempt was shelved due to regulatory enquiries. The BSE, which listed in January 2017, has delivered a 35x return to public shareholders, fuelled by a surge in trading volumes post-pandemic. In 2025-26, the NSE earned around 60 percent of its total revenues of Rs 16,601 crore from equity options trading, a segment that barely existed when NSE first filed for an IPO in 2015-16.