About 1.46 lakh retail investors now hold National Stock Exchange (NSE) shares in the grey (unlisted) market, a record for any Indian company.

The June quarter of FY26 saw investors lapping up more NSE shares in anticipation that the stock exchange is gearing up for an initial public offering (IPO) of its shares soon.

Interestingly, retail investors' appetite remains strong despite a significant increase in share prices. As many as 1.46 lakh investors hold positions in NSE shares, worth less than Rs 2 lakh.

This number surged four-fold from 33,896 investors in the previous quarter. Conversely, 343 investors hold shares worth more than Rs 2 lakh, which is down from 354 in the previous quarter, according to the NSE website.

With this, investors with more than 2 lakh worth of NSE shares now hold 11.81 per cent of the total NSE share supply. This percentage is up from 9.89 percent in the previous quarter. Investors who owned shares worth less than Rs 2 lakh saw a small drop in their total ownership. Their stake went down from 9.84 per cent (23.86 crore shares) to 9.52 per cent (23.56 crore shares).

This surge in retail participation rapidly expanded NSE’s overall investor base, which now exceeds 1.59 lakh shareholders — up sharply from 39,201 in the previous quarter, making NSE India’s largest unlisted company by shareholder count.

Due to the surge in retail demand, NSE's unlisted share price rose over 36 per cent, from Rs 1,650 in April 2025 to its current price of Rs 2,225 per share. If NSE, which has an unlisted market cap size of 5.7 lakh crore, was listed, its market valuation would be 8th or 9th in the Nifty 50.

While foreign institutional investors (FIIs) sold Rs 5,870 crore in NSE shares during the quarter, major domestic institutional investors like LIC, SBI, Radhakishan Damani, and government-backed insurers like GIC, New India Assurance, National Insurance Company, and Oriental Insurance maintained their stakes.