An IPO looks, from the outside, like a three-day event with a premium attached. The company has usually been in the process for months. Knowing the order stops you from treating a draft document as a live offer, or a grey-market quote as a sign that bidding is open. Here is the path a book-built mainboard issue typically walks. SME issues rhyme with it and publish their own dates. The dates on the IPO page should match the prospectus. If they do not, the prospectus and the exchange notice win, and the contact form is how you tell us we are behind.
Filing the draft
The company files a draft red herring prospectus. This is the long document: business, risks, financials, objects, litigation. It may not have a price band yet. It is not an invitation to apply. You cannot send a UPI mandate against a DRHP. You can read it, which is the best use of the quiet weeks. How to read a DRHP is a route through it. SEBI reviews the draft and issues observations. The company responds, updates disclosures, and only then moves toward a red herring prospectus. Observations are correspondence about disclosure. They are not a rating and not a recommendation to buy.
The RHP and the band
The red herring prospectus is the offer document with the near-final terms. The price band is announced before the bid opens, often a few days prior, in a newspaper advertisement and on the exchange. That is the moment the tracker can show a real floor and cap rather than a rumour. Lot size, reservations, registrar, and the timetable sit in this document. Anchor investors, if the issue has them, bid on the day before the public window. Their list is published. Retail readers still cannot apply on anchor day. Anchors explains what that list does and does not prove.
The bidding window
The issue opens and closes on the dates in the timetable, commonly across three working days. Bids are collected on the exchanges. Retail investors approve UPI mandates. Banks block ASBA amounts. Subscription files update through the day and are revised after the close. Midday multiples are drafts. GMP, if anyone is quoting it, will twitch whenever those drafts move. The twitch is not a new prospectus.
You may modify or withdraw during the window, subject to broker cut-off times. After the close, the book is shut. How to apply is the retail click-path inside this window and only inside this window.
Price, allotment, money, shares
The issue price is finalised from the book. The registrar runs allotment and publishes the basis. On the basis date, PAN checks start working on the registrar’s site. Refunds and mandate releases follow for the people who were not allotted, or for the extra block if the discovered price was below the cap. Demat accounts are credited on the credit date. These steps are neighbours. The allotment guide and the mandate guide cover the two retail questions: did I get shares, and when does the lien die?
If the offer misses the minimum subscription, this part of the timeline is replaced by a withdrawal and a release of blocks. There is no listing. Undersubscription is that branch.
Listing and the weeks after
Listing day is the first exchange session, with a pre-open auction that sets the first print. It is described in what happens on listing day. The GMP’s job ends here, whether or not it matched the print. Anchor lock-in dates, often 30 days and 90 days from allotment in recent offer documents, sit after listing. Promoter lock-in sits further out. Put the dates in a calendar if you still hold the shares. They are supply events, not automatic sell orders.
A reader’s calendar, stripped of noise
While the document is still a draft, read and do not apply. When the band is announced, do the rupee multiplication and decide whether the cap is acceptable in a dull outcome. When the window is open, apply once, properly, or not at all. When it closes, stop refreshing subscription as if it could change your form. On the basis date, check the registrar once. On the credit date, confirm the demat. On listing day, follow a plan you wrote earlier. In the month after, if you hold, re-read the risk that mattered rather than the premium that expired.
Dates slip, and the slip is public
A company can move the open date after the red herring prospectus is out, usually by a short notice and an updated advertisement. A GMP quoted against the old open date is then a quote about a timetable that no longer exists. When you see a date on this site that disagrees with the exchange, believe the exchange the same day and treat our page as waiting for a refresh. That is also why a tracker is not an application channel. The broker’s IPO list is fed by the live issue. If the company is missing there, it is not open, however confident a chat sounds.
There is no official day on this timeline called “GMP day”. The unofficial quote can appear as soon as a draft is rumoured and can continue until the pre-open auction. It is a parallel conversation, not a step the regulator inserted. Putting it on the calendar as if it were allotment or listing is how the unofficial number starts to look like a milestone you are owed. It is not a milestone. The milestones are the ones in the prospectus timetable, and they are enough.
The boards on this site are useful from the band announcement through allotment. The guides are useful before that, which is when most of the actual thinking fits. The disclaimer is in force at every step, including the quiet ones.