The full IPO timeline, every date explained
The answer
An IPO is about 12 dated events, not 1. Two of them decide whether you get shares. Three of them decide when your money moves. And 2 of them happen months after listing, when large blocks of shares become sellable on a date that was published before you ever applied.
The last 2 are the ones almost nobody has in their calendar.
Why this costs you money
Three losses, in increasing order of size.
One: you do not know your money is blocked. In India, applying for an IPO blocks the amount in your bank account. You cannot use it. If you applied for ₹1.5 lakh of shares and receive 1 lot worth ₹15,000, the rest is released — but only after the allotment is finalised, several days later. People plan around money that is not available.
Two: you confuse the closing date with the listing date. The issue closes, and then nothing trades for a few days. Investors who expected to sell immediately discover a gap they did not know existed.
Three, and this is the expensive one: you buy a recently listed company without checking who is allowed to sell it, and when.
Every IPO creates locked shares. Anchor investors in India are locked in for 30 and 90 days. Promoters are locked in for far longer. In the United States, insiders sign a lock-up agreement, usually 90 to 180 days. On each of those dates, a large quantity of shares becomes sellable at once.
These dates are published in the prospectus. They are known to every professional. A buyer who has not looked them up is buying into a scheduled supply event without knowing the schedule.
How it works
Six stages. The times are typical, not fixed.
Stage 1 — Preparation. Three to 12 months. The board approves. Banks, lawyers, auditors and a registrar are appointed. Financial statements are restated to the required format. The draft prospectus is written. Nothing here is public.
Stage 2 — The regulator. One to 4 months.
- India: the DRHP, or draft red herring prospectus, is filed with SEBI and the exchanges. It becomes public. SEBI reviews it and issues observations, which the company must address. Those observations have a validity period, after which the company must refile if it has not launched
.
- United States: the Form S-1 is filed with the SEC. Smaller companies may submit it confidentially first. The SEC sends comment letters and the company files amended versions. Each amendment is public.
Stage 3 — Launch. Days, not months.
- The RHP is filed, containing everything except the final price.
- The price band is announced shortly before opening.
- Anchor investors are allotted 1 working day before the issue opens
. In the United States there is no equivalent step.
Stage 4 — The offer window. In India, at least 3 working days. In the United States, a roadshow of about 1 to 2 weeks, with the book built confidentially and the price agreed the evening before trading.
Stage 5 — Allotment and listing. This is where the 2 countries stop resembling each other, and the detail is in the sections below. In India this whole stretch is compressed into T+3 working days from the closing date, and it has been mandatory since December 2023.
Stage 6 — After listing. The stage nobody markets.
| Event | India | United States |
|---|---|---|
| Anchor or cornerstone lock-in ends | 30 days, then 90 days | Usually no anchor step |
| Underwriter research may begin | Not the binding constraint | After a restricted period |
| Insider lock-up or lock-in ends | Promoter lock-in of 18 months on the minimum contribution, 6 months on the rest | Typically 90 to 180 days |
| First results as a listed company | Within the normal quarterly deadline | Within the normal quarterly deadline |
| Index inclusion possible | After eligibility criteria are met | After eligibility criteria are met |
What it tells you, and what it does not
A published lock-in expiry tells you the date on which supply increases. It does not tell you that the price will fall.
Sometimes the holders sell and the price falls. Sometimes the holders do not sell, because they believe in the company or because selling a large block would move the price against them. Sometimes the market has already priced the event, because everyone can read the same prospectus.
What the date reliably tells you is when to stop being surprised. A stock that drops 9% on a day with no news, 91 days after listing, is not a mystery. It is a calendar entry you did not open.
The gap between closing and listing tells you something else. It is a period in which you have committed money, have no position, and cannot act. In India that is up to 3 working days after the issue closes. In the United States it is effectively zero. Neither arrangement is better in the abstract. But the Indian one creates an exposure that has no equivalent, and it is worth knowing you have it.
The decision rule
For any company that listed in the last 12 months, put 3 dates in your calendar before you buy 1 share.
1. The anchor lock-in expiries — in India, 30 days and 90 days from allotment.
2. The insider lock-up or lock-in expiry — in the United States, the date stated in the Underwriting section of the prospectus, typically 180 days . In India, the promoter lock-in dates stated in the Capital Structure section.
3. The first 2 results announcements. A newly listed company has no public track record. The first 2 quarters are the first evidence that exists.
Then apply the rule: do not interpret a price move on any of those dates as news about the business. It may be. It usually is not. It is supply, or it is the first real information the market has received.
Try this now
Five minutes. You need a stock that listed in the last 2 years. If you do not hold one, use one from your watchlist.
- Find the prospectus. In India, search the company name plus "RHP". In the United States, find the final prospectus, form 424B4, on the SEC's EDGAR system.
- In an Indian prospectus, search for "lock-in". Two places matter: the Capital Structure section, which sets out the promoter lock-in periods, and the anchor investor provisions, which state the 30-day and 90-day releases.
- In a US prospectus, search for "lock-up" and read the paragraph in the Underwriting section. It gives the number of days and, importantly, any conditions that allow early release.
- Find the date of allotment or the listing date, and count forward. Write the resulting dates down.
- Put each date in your phone's calendar with the stock's name.
What you should see. For an Indian listing, 2 dates land within about 3 months of listing, and 1 lands much later. For a US listing, 1 date lands about 6 months after listing, and the paragraph often contains an early-release condition tied to the share price or to a results announcement.
That last detail is the payload. In India a lock-in is enforced by the depository — the shares are frozen and cannot move. In the United States a lock-up is a contract with the underwriters, and the underwriters can release it early. They sometimes do. So the Indian date is a fact, and the American date is an expectation with an escape clause you can read.
If you hold a recently listed company and the 90-day or 180-day date has already passed, go and look at what the price did that week. You will usually find a move you had no explanation for at the time.
Three real cases
1. Life Insurance Corporation of India, February to May 2022 — a full Indian timeline, compressed LIC filed its draft prospectus with SEBI on 13 February 2022. SEBI issued its observations, the issue opened on 4 May 2022 and closed on 9 May 2022, and the shares listed on 17 May 2022. The gap between the closing date and the listing date was about 6 calendar days, under the rules in force at the time. Applicants had money blocked across that period and no position to manage. The shares listed below the issue price, which meant the first decision available to a retail applicant was made on a price they had watched for a week and could not act on.
2. Paytm, July to November 2021 (India) — the length of the preparation stage One 97 Communications filed its draft prospectus in July 2021, received SEBI's observations in October 2021, opened its issue on 8 November 2021, closed it on 10 November, and listed on 18 November 2021. The visible part of the process — the 3 days you could apply — was 3 days out of roughly 5 months. Every important decision, including the price band, was taken before the public part began.
3. Facebook, 2012 (United States) — the lock-up expiries as a supply calendar Facebook filed its Form S-1 on 1 February 2012, priced the offering on 17 May and traded from 18 May 2012 at $38. Its lock-up arrangements were staggered across several dates rather than 1, with large tranches of shares becoming sellable from August 2012 onwards. The share price fell through that period and reached its low in September 2012, below half the offer price . It later recovered far above it. The dates were disclosed in the prospectus in February, months before anybody bought a share.
The question that resolves it
A novice looks at a recently listed stock and asks: why did it fall today?
An expert asks the question a week earlier: who becomes free to sell this stock, and on what date?
Both questions are about the same event. Only 1 of them can be answered before it happens, and the answer is in a document that was published for free.
What would make this wrong
If lock-up expiries were reliably bad for the price, then selling before them would be a profitable rule. It is not reliably profitable, because the date is public and widely known, and markets price known events in advance to varying degrees.
The honest limits:
The research on lock-up expiries finds a modest average negative effect around the date, with wide variation. It is a tendency, not a mechanism. Plenty of stocks rise through their lock-up expiry.
The effect also depends on how much of the company is locked and who holds it. A lock-up releasing 5% of the shares held by long-term founders is not the same event as one releasing 40% held by funds that need to distribute.
And the compressed Indian post-issue timeline is a rule that has changed twice in recent years. Any specific number of days in this article should be checked against the current SEBI circular before you rely on it.
In India
The Indian timeline after the issue closes is regulated, standardised and short.
T+3. Listing must happen within 3 working days of the issue closing date. This became mandatory for issues opening on or after 1 December 2023, after a voluntary period from September 2023. The earlier standard was T+6.
Inside those 3 days: the basis of allotment is finalised, allotments are made, the blocked funds of unsuccessful applicants are released, shares are credited to demat accounts, and trading begins.
ASBA and UPI. Your money is blocked in your own bank account, not paid away. Unsuccessful applications are unblocked. Partially successful ones are debited for the allotted amount only.
Lock-in. This is where India is unusually strict, and unusually useful to you.
- Promoters must contribute a minimum share of the post-issue capital, and that contribution is locked in for 18 months. Promoter holdings above that minimum are locked for 6 months.
- Anchor investors have their allocation released in 2 parts, after 30 days and after 90 days.
- Lock-in is enforced through the depositories, which flag the shares. They cannot be sold, whatever anybody agrees privately.
Minimum public shareholding. A newly listed company must reach 25% public shareholding, with a period allowed for very large issues. That deadline is a future supply event too, and it is disclosed.
In the United States
The American timeline has a completely different shape after the offer window.
There is no allotment period. The price is set the evening before trading. Allocations are communicated to institutional buyers that night. Trading begins the next morning. There is no blocked money, no refund cycle, and no gap between knowing your allocation and being able to trade.
Settlement of the offering follows the normal cycle, but that is a back-office matter and does not delay trading.
The lock-up. Insiders, employees and pre-IPO investors sign an agreement with the underwriters not to sell for a stated period, typically 180 days . Two features matter and neither exists in India.
- The underwriters can waive it. They sometimes release insiders early, commonly after a strong results announcement.
- Many lock-ups contain automatic early-release triggers, for example if the share price exceeds a stated level for a stated number of days after results. Staggered structures, releasing shares in tranches, have become common.
Research restrictions. Rules restrict when the underwriters' own analysts may publish research on a newly listed company. When that period ends, several positive research notes often appear at once, from the same banks that sold the issue.
Reporting. The company files its first quarterly report on Form 10-Q, and its first annual report on Form 10-K, on the normal SEC deadlines.
Where they differ, and what that tells you
Two differences, and both change what you should do.
The first is the gap. In India, you commit money, wait, learn whether you received shares, and then wait again to trade. In the United States there is no gap at all for an institutional buyer, and a retail buyer through a broker's IPO access programme learns their allocation the night before trading.
What that tells an Indian investor is that an IPO application is a short-term commitment of capital with an uncertain outcome, not a purchase. Treat the blocked amount as unavailable, and do not apply with money you may need that week.
The second difference is the reliability of a lock-in date, and it is the more useful one.
In India, a lock-in is a freeze at the depository. The shares physically cannot move. If the prospectus says 90 days, then on day 91 the supply exists and not before. You can rely on the date.
In the United States, a lock-up is a private contract with the underwriters, and it can be waived. The stated 180 days is the maximum expectation, not a guarantee. Early releases happen, and the conditions that permit them are often written into the agreement in advance.
So the same research task has different outputs. An Indian investor reads a number and writes a date. An American investor reads a paragraph and writes a date plus the conditions that could bring it forward. Copying the Indian habit into the American market gives you a date you will trust more than it deserves.
Carry this
- Closing date, allotment date and listing date are 3 different days. Your money is blocked across all of them.
- Lock-in expiries are scheduled supply. Put them in your calendar before you buy.
- In India the lock-in date is a freeze. In the United States it is a contract that can be waived.