Bharat Coking Coal draws $13 billion bids in India IPO

Bharat Coking Coal drew bids worth 1.17 trillion rupees ($12.97 billion) for its $118.7 million initial public offering on Tuesday, as prospects of strong demand for coking coal from steelmakers lifted appetite for the shares.

The company, which is India’s top coking coal miner, received bids for 50.93 billion shares, nearly 147 times the number of shares on offer, at the end of three days of bidding, as per exchange data.

The firm is a subsidiary of state-owned Coal India.

The strong response underscores continued investor interest in Indian primary market after two years of record fund-raising.

Bharat Coking Coal is the first mainboard IPO in India this year and consists entirely of a stake sale by its parent.

India ranked as the world’s second-largest primary market in 2025 after the United States, with 367 IPOs raising $21.8 billion, according to LSEG data.

Offerings from companies such as LG Electronics India and ecommerce platform Meesho drew strong demand during the year.

“Despite turbulence in the secondary market, this shows that primary market remains buoyant. The investor interest in Bharat Coking Coal is also driven by its strong parentage,” said Kranthi Bathini, director of equity strategy at WealthMills Securities.

“The Indian coking coal industry benefits from structural demand growth driven by government-led infrastructure development, capacity addition in steel manufacturing, and policy emphasis on import substitution,” said Ventura Securities.

Qualified institutional buyers bid for 24.61 billion shares of Bharat Coking Coal, about 311 times the number of shares on offer for them, leading the subscriptions.

Non-institutional investors and retail investors quota were subscribed 258 times and 49 times, respectively.

($1 = 90.1780 Indian rupees)

(By Vivek Kumar M; Editing by Nivedita Bhattacharjee)