Applying for an IPO does not move money to the company on the day you press submit. For a retail application, your broker sends a bid and your bank blocks the funds in your account. The block uses ASBA — Application Supported by Blocked Amount — usually completed, for a retail bid, through a UPI mandate that you approve in your own UPI app. If shares are allotted, the blocked amount is debited. If they are not, the block is released. You should still treat the block as money you cannot spend until that release happens. People who apply for three IPOs in one week sometimes discover the blocks overlap and a later mandate fails for lack of balance.

This is the ordinary retail path. Applications above ₹2 lakh sit in a different category and often use the bank’s ASBA route directly rather than the retail UPI flow. The steps below are for a reader applying within the retail limit, through a SEBI-registered broker, for a book-built mainboard or SME issue that is actually open.

Before the window opens

You need a demat account and a linked bank account. The PAN on the demat, the broker, and the bank should be the same person. Mismatched names and inactive UPI IDs are a common reason a mandate never arrives. Decide the UPI ID you will use and make sure that UPI app is the one you can open during market hours. A mandate that sits unapproved at the close is not a bid.

Read the price band and the lot size on the IPO page, then confirm them in the red herring prospectus or on the exchange. One lot is the minimum. The amount blocked at cut-off is lot size times the upper price, not the lower price, because the bank blocks the most you might have to pay. If that number is larger than the cash you can leave untouched until refund day, do not apply and hope. Price band, lot size, and cut-off shows the multiplication.

You also choose a category. Retail individual, employee, and shareholder are not interchangeable buttons. An employee reservation needs you to actually be an employee, on the terms in the prospectus. A shareholder reservation needs you to hold the parent company’s shares on the record date the prospectus names. Ticking the wrong category can invalidate the application. If you are simply a retail investor, use the retail category and stay at or under ₹2 lakh.

On a day the issue is open

Open your broker’s IPO section, not a link from a message. Select the company. Check that the dates match the homepage and the exchange. Enter the number of lots. For a retail bid in a book-built issue, “cut-off” is the usual choice: you accept the price the book discovers, up to the cap. A specific price below the cap is a bet that the discovered price will not exceed your bid. If it does, you are not allotted. Qualified institutional buyers do not get a cut-off option. Retail investors do. Use it unless you have a reason you can explain without using the word “GMP”.

Submit the bid. The broker creates a UPI mandate request to the ID you entered. Open the UPI app and approve the mandate for the exact amount. Approval is not the same as sharing your UPI PIN with a person or a website. You approve inside the app you already trust for payments. No employee of an IPO website, including this one, will ever need that PIN or an OTP. If someone asks, it is fraud.

You can modify or withdraw a bid during the bidding window, subject to your broker’s cut-off time on the last day. Last-day afternoon is when retail traffic spikes. Do not wait until the final minutes if your UPI app is slow. A bid entered at the broker and a mandate never approved is an incomplete application.

After you approve

The money stays in your bank, blocked. You can usually see the block as a lien. Do not move your balance so low that the bank drops the mandate. Multiple IPO applications in one name are allowed up to the retail ceiling in total for that issue; applications from the same PAN are consolidated. Applying from three broker accounts does not create three independent lottery tickets. The registrar sees one PAN.

Watch the subscription tracker if you want context, and remember the midday file is not the final file. Nothing about a rising retail multiple improves an application you have already submitted correctly. It only changes how crowded the lottery may be. Withdrawing because a premium flickered is a mood decision. The bid itself does not need babysitting once the mandate is approved.

What rejection looks like

Applications fail quietly. Typical causes: the UPI mandate was not approved before the close; the UPI ID did not match the bank account; the application amount crossed the retail limit while still marked retail; the PAN was not linked properly to the demat; the bid price was below the final issue price and was not at cut-off; or the category was one you were not eligible for. The registrar’s status, after allotment, is where a rejection reason sometimes appears. It will not appear on a GMP page.

If the issue itself fails to collect the minimum subscription the prospectus requires, the offer is withdrawn and blocks are released across the book. That is a property of the issue, not of your form. When an IPO is undersubscribed describes that case.

A clean example

Band ₹95–₹100. Lot 150 shares. You apply for one lot at cut-off. The mandate is 150 × ₹100 = ₹15,000. You approve it in your UPI app on day one. On the close, the discovered price is ₹100. Retail is oversubscribed. Allotment is a draw. Two possibilities follow, and you will not know which until the registrar publishes status: you receive 150 shares and ₹15,000 leaves your bank, or you receive nothing and the lien drops. There is no third outcome in which the grey-market premium is credited to your account. Listing price is a later event, covered in what happens on listing day.

What this site will not do in the application

Contact cannot submit a bid, repair a mandate, or see your PAN. The application lives at your broker and your bank. Use this site to read the band, the dates, and the category maths before you open the broker app, and use the allotment hub only as a signpost to the registrar after the close. The disclaimer applies to the decision to apply at all. Nothing in the steps above says the issue is worth the upper end of the band. That judgement is the prospectus, not the mandate screen.