Anchor Investors Entered 242 IPOs. But Who Stayed Invested After the Lock-In?

When an IPO announces well-known institutional investors as anchor investors, it often creates a sense of confidence among retail investors. After all, these are large institutions with professional investment teams and significant resources. But SEBI recently studied what happened to these anchor holdings after the IPO was listed, covering 242 mainboard IPOs between April 2022 and October 2025.

The data shows that anchor investors generally did not rush for the exit immediately. The aggregate weighted exit from anchor holdings was only 3.2% around the first unlock, increasing to around 8% by 60 days and 17.3% by 90 days. This means that the majority of the anchor allocation was still being held during the early post-listing period.

However, the picture changes as the holding period gets longer. SEBI's extended analysis of 167 IPOs found that cumulative anchor exits reached approximately 34% by 180 days and 50.7% by 365 days. In other words, roughly half of the aggregate anchor allocation had been sold within one year.

There was also a notable difference between different types of institutional investors. By one year, FPIs had exited around 60% of their anchor allocation, compared with approximately 38% for mutual funds. This suggests that simply seeing institutional participation in an IPO does not necessarily mean that those investors intend to remain invested for the long term.

The difference becomes even more striking among smaller IPOs. For IPOs with an issue size of ₹0–250 crore, anchor exits were around 32.4% by 90 days and approximately 72.5% by one year. That means nearly three-quarters of the original anchor allocation in this category had been sold within a year.

So what should a retail investor take away from this?

Anchor participation is only one piece of information. Instead of looking only at who invested in an IPO, investors may also want to examine how much they invested, when they were allowed to sell, how much they actually sold, and whether they continued holding the stock afterwards.

An investor entering an IPO is making one decision. Staying invested is another.

The next time you see an IPO headline highlighting its prestigious anchor investors, perhaps the more interesting question isn't "Who bought?"

It's:

"Who stayed?"

Think.