IPO or Initial Public Offer is a way for a company to raise money from investors for its future projects and get listed to Stock Exchange. In other words, an Initial Public Offer (IPO), is the first sale of shares by the privately owned company to the public. The companies going public raises funds through IPO’s for working capital, debt repayment, acquisitions, and a host of other uses.

From an investor point of view, IPO gives a chance to buy shares of a company, directly from the company at the price of their choice (In book build IPO’s). Many a times there is a big difference between the price at which companies decides for its shares and the price on which investor are willing to buy share and that gives a good listing gain for shares allocated to the investor in IPO.

From a company prospective, IPO help them to identify their real value which is decided by millions of investor once their shares are listed in stock exchanges. IPO’s also provide funds for their future growth or for paying their previous borrowings.

Basis of Allotment (or Basis of IPO Stock Allocation) is a document published by the registrar of an IPO after finalizing the share allocation based on SEBI guidelines. This document provides information about the demand of the IPO stock.

The IPO allotment information is categorized by number of shares applied by investors. For each such category detail bidding information is provided in this document including number of valid application received, total number of share applied, ratio of the allotment and number of shares allocated to the applicants.

Ratio of the allotment is a critical factor for IPO’s oversubscribed multiple times. This field tells how many applicants will receive single lot of shares among a certain number of applicants. For example, ratio 1:8 means only one out of eight applicant received one lot of shares; ratio value ‘FIRM’ means all the applicants are eligible to receive certain amount of share.