- Trading volume has risen multifold over the past year
- Concerns are growing about scams targeting retail investors
As India’s stock exchanges expand, minting dozens of billionaires over the past few years, a sprawling and largely unregulated gray market for unlisted shares has emerged.
Analysts estimate that monthly trading has averaged as much as $300 million this fiscal year, up from $50 to $60 million last year. Investors are snapping up pieces of India’s hottest companies before they’re listed on benchmark indexes, including upstart quick commerce firms like Swiggy Ltd. and financial services provider Tata Capital Ltd.
The booming market for unlisted shares in India is giving top stockbrokers and asset managers another way to profit from stock debuts, but the proliferation of scams has also raised calls for more transparency.
Dozens of websites selling unlisted shares have popped up for retail investors. So far, the Securities and Exchange Board of India has done little to regulate the trades, unlike counterparts in places like Hong Kong or the US, where the markets are much larger and better policed.
“The current IPO regulations need to be strengthened,” said Sudarshan Bhandari, co-founder of Beat The Street, an independent market research company.
Over the next few months, 30 initial public offerings worth nearly $4 billion are lined up in India. Many will offer unlisted shares. Since the pandemic, the NSE Nifty 50 has jumped over 200%, with the total market value of India’s stock market now around $5 trillion, though benchmark indexes have slumped considerably over the past month.
Umesh Paliwal, co-founder of Unlisted Zone, one of the websites for retail investors, said trading volume on his platform has increased three to five times in the last few months alone. Since 2020, the number of brokerage accounts in India has climbed 10-fold, with growing interest among people based outside urban centers.
“We are seeing investors from small towns come to the platform,” Paliwal said.
Piyush Jhunjhunwala, a Dubai-based entrepreneur, said the diaspora is also eager to cash-in on India’s equity boom. After experiencing success buying unlisted shares, Jhunjhunwala founded Stockify Fintech Pvt. in 2022 to cater to foreign investors. Since then, website traffic has jumped nearly 20 times.
Falling victim to scams is a concern in particular for retail investors, who have few protections in India if a platform doesn’t deliver. Fly-by-night operators are preying on India’s newest investors, who often rely on guidance from social media influencers for trades.
In 2019, Sushil P., a Norway-based software engineer, tried to buy equity in One 97 Communications Ltd., better known as Paytm, before it listed on India’s exchanges. He purchased shares from wealth management startup Minance Investment Advisors Pvt., an investment advisory firm founded by Anurag Bhatia, formerly an Amazon India risk analyst.
A prominent voice on social media, Bhatia was in many ways one of India’s earliest financial influencers. He offered investment advice on platforms like Quora, analyzing market movements and spinning tales about his trading skills to nearly 40,000 followers.
Sushil was pulled in. But he never received the Paytm shares from Minance and had to chase the company for weeks before getting his money back. In 2020, SEBI barred Bhatia and others from accessing India’s securities market. Local authorities charged him with fraud.
Minance has since shut down and Bhatia didn’t reply to a request for comment.
“People are buying shares in anticipation of prices shooting up in a short period of time when the company lists,” said Sushil. “Greed is forcing people to enter this asset class without any basic understanding of the companies they are investing in.”
For now, the big money is concentrated with wealth managers, stockbrokers and investment banks. They’re buying large lots of unlisted equity and preference shares from founders, employees and investors before selling to clients for a commission.
Sandipan Roy, chief investment officer at Motilal Oswal Private Wealth, said money managers also commonly procure shares from three or four large investors before breaking them up into smaller quantities for online platforms and wealth firms.
Company employees, venture capital firms and private equity institutions have looked for their own ways to profit. One strategy is to flood the market with shares prior to a stock listing or right after the draft prospectus is filed. That effectively transfers risk from insiders and institutions to retail investors, who then absorb the fallout if an IPO is weaker than expected or internal financial issues come to light that were previously unknown to outside buyers.
Take food delivery startup Swiggy, which listed on India’s stock exchanges for $1.3 billion this month. While the company’s investors, chief executive Sriharsha Majety and other senior executives made millions through the IPO, they also sold over $85 million worth of shares between April and November.
A significant portion was purchased by platforms and wealth management firms that deal in unlisted shares primarily for retail investors. Employees from Swiggy, which declined to comment, departed with thousands of shares in anticipation of the IPO announcement. And private equity investors from China and South Korea also unloaded starting in September, according to two people aware of the development.
Bhandari, from Beat The Street, sees this as a transparency issue, even if the strategy isn’t illegal. Capitalizing on the frenzy for unlisted shares, managers and others in-the-know are selling more than they intended to or publicly disclosed, he said.
In August, solar cell manufacturer Premier Energies Ltd. raised $337 million selling 62.8 million shares as part of its IPO. But days prior to listing, the company’s founder and investors sold 19.3 million shares to a select set of mutual funds and foreign institutions. (The company didn’t respond to a request for comment.)
“Some founders are taking advantage of huge premiums in the unlisted space,” Bhandari said.
Written by: Advait Palepu and Alex Gabriel Simon @Bloomberg
The post “Boom in Unlisted Share Trading Creates Riches and Risks in India” first appeared on Bloomberg