Key Takeaways from IPOs listed in 2019 - IPO Stack
Welcome to IPO Stack’s complete tracker for all IPOs listed in India in 2019. This page follows the full lifecycle of every public issue from that year — from the offer price set during the subscription window, through the opening price on listing day, all the way to where each stock trades today.
Whether you are a long-term investor revisiting a holding from 2019, a researcher studying how India’s primary market performed through a turbulent macro environment, or a new investor building knowledge of how IPO outcomes unfold over time, this page is your complete reference.
2019 was a year of contrasts for the Indian primary market. 20 companies went public — a quieter year in terms of volume compared to 2017 — but the quality and diversity of the cohort were remarkable. The year produced what is arguably the single greatest long-term IPO investment of the entire decade in Polycab India, alongside one of the most anticipated government enterprise listings in Indian history in IRCTC.
It also delivered some of the sharpest disappointments of the tracker, including a completely undersubscribed large issue in Sterling and Wilson Solar and near-total collapses in sugar and cement companies that attracted almost no institutional interest.
The 2019 class spans an exceptionally wide range of business types — wires and cables, diagnostics, digital advertising technology, B2B marketplaces, real estate investment trusts, hotel chains, solar EPC, microfinance, banking, chemicals, and piping — making it one of the most analytically rich cohorts in this series.
An important note on IRCTC: Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation underwent a stock split of 1:5 in October 2021. The CMP and Chg Since Listing figures in the data table reflect the current post-split market price against the original pre-split listing price of ₹626. Readers comparing raw numbers should account for this corporate action — on a split-adjusted basis, the actual return for an investor who bought at listing and held is materially different from what the raw percentage in the table suggests.
How to Read this:
Issue Price is the per-share price at which the company offered its shares to the public during the IPO.
Listing Price is the stock exchange opening price on the day the company was officially listed. Comparing this with the Issue Price tells you whether the IPO had a strong debut (listing above issue price) or a weak one (listing below issue price).
CMP (Current Market Price) is the latest available trading price of the stock. This tells you where the stock price is today, years after the listing.
Chg Since Listing is arguably the most important column on this page. It shows the percentage change between the Listing Price and the CMP — meaning how much an investor who bought at the listing and held until today has gained or lost. This is the core metric IPO Stack tracks across every year.
Subscribed tells you how many times the issue was oversubscribed during the bidding period. A higher subscription multiple means stronger investor demand at the time of the IPO. A lower subscription means low demand.
52-Week High / Low gives you context on recent price action — whether a stock is currently trading near its annual peak or its annual bottom. This allows investors to make up their minds to invest or not.
CHG 1D points at the change that occurred in 1 day. It is the comparision on the price of stock on CMP (current market price) vs pClose (previous day price at market close) %CHG indicates the percentage of change that occurred in 1 day.
Key Takeaways from IPO 2019 by IPOStack:
Polycab India is one of the greatest IPO investments in Indian market history. A gain of 1,207.90% from the listing price — more than 13× in just over five years — places it in the company of DMart (2017) and CDSL (2017) as a generational wealth creator. What makes Polycab particularly instructive is that it was not an internet company or a high-growth narrative business. It was a cables and wires manufacturer — a capital-intensive, unglamorous industrial business — that compounded through market share dominance, execution discipline, and the structural tailwind of India’s electrification and infrastructure buildout.
Healthcare has delivered positive returns for the sixth consecutive year. Metropolis Healthcare (+92.64%) continues the unbroken run of diagnostics and hospital sector IPOs delivering positive long-term gains across every year from 2015 through 2019 on this tracker. No other sector has matched this consistency.
The only undersubscribed IPO of 2019 — Sterling and Wilson Solar — is also the second-worst performer. At 0.85× subscription, the market explicitly told promoters and investment bankers before listing that the pricing was not acceptable. The decision to proceed and list anyway resulted in a 74.28% loss for investors who participated. This makes Sterling and Wilson one of the clearest examples on the tracker of why undersubscription at the time of an IPO is not just a data point — it is the market’s most direct warning to potential investors about pricing risk.
Three lightly covered, modest-subscription IPOs — MSTC (1.46×), Xelpmoc (3.25×), and PPAP (10.35×) — have all delivered solid positive returns. MSTC in particular, with a gain of 281.74% from a discount listing, continues the pattern established over six years of this tracker: stocks that are ignored, lightly subscribed, and list below their issue price frequently go on to deliver better long-term returns than the heavily marketed, heavily subscribed issues of the same year.
The most subscribed IPO of 2019 — Ujjivan Small Finance Bank at 165.66× — is marginally in the red. Despite 165-fold oversubscription, listing-day investors have lost 8.09% so far. This continues the relentless pattern across every year of this tracker: extreme oversubscription is not a predictor of long-term returns. From Quess Corp (144×, 2016) to Advanced Enzyme (116×, 2016) to Salasar Techno (273×, 2017) to Astron Paper (241×, 2017) to Ujjivan Small Finance Bank (166×, 2019) — the data across six years is unambiguous.
IRCTC’s raw data requires adjustment for its stock split. The −11.5% change shown in the table compares a pre-split listing price of ₹626 to a post-split current price of ₹554. On a split-adjusted basis, the true return for a listing-day holder is approximately +343%. IRCTC is a genuine wealth creator — one of the most powerful monopoly franchises to enter the public market in the decade. This is an important reminder for IPO Stack readers: always check for corporate actions like stock splits, bonus shares, and rights issues when interpreting long-term return data.
The microfinance sector has been the most consistent destroyer of value in financial services IPOs. Spandana Sphoorty (−71.22%), Ujjivan Small Finance Bank (−8.09%), and Ujjivan Financial Services from 2016 (−76.27%) form a clear pattern. Microfinance businesses carry systemic risks — borrower over-leverage, regulatory sensitivity, political intervention in loan waivers, and exposure to the most economically vulnerable borrowers — that make them structurally fragile even when their near-term credit metrics look healthy at the time of listing.
20 IPOs tracked across a wide variety of sectors — wires & cables, diagnostics, B2B marketplace, adtech, hotels, railways, chemicals, REIT, microfinance, and more.
Top performers since listing:
- 🟢 Polycab India — +1,207.90% (one of the greatest IPO investments in Indian market history — 13× from listing)
- 🟢 Neogen Chemicals — +441.83% (₹132 Cr small issue, quietly compounded)
- 🟢 MSTC Limited — +281.74% (1.46× subscribed, listed at a discount!)
- 🟢 Chalet Hotels — +159.45%
- 🟢 Metropolis Healthcare — +92.64% (healthcare’s 6th straight positive year on the tracker)
- 🟢 IRCTC — appears −11.5% but actually ~+343% on split-adjusted basis ⚠️ (flagged with full explanation)
Worst performers since listing:
- 🔴 Vishwaraj Sugar — −90.47% (worst of class)
- 🔴 Sterling and Wilson Solar — −74.28% (only IPO of 2019 that was undersubscribed at 0.85× — market warned investors before listing!)
- 🔴 Spandana Sphoorty — −71.22%
- 🔴 Manaksia — −68.25%
About IPOStack:
IPOStack is a blog dedicated to tracking the complete lifecycle of Indian IPOs — from the DRHP filing stage, through the subscription period and listing day, all the way to the current market price years later. Every year has its own dedicated tracker page so you can study IPO performance step by step.
Use these pages to build a historical understanding of how the Indian primary market has evolved, which sectors have rewarded investors, and how listing-day price action compares to long-term value creation.
Disclaimer: All data on this page is for informational and educational purposes only. IPO Stack does not provide investment advice. Please do your own due diligence before making any investment decisions. Market prices are subject to change.