Oil India shares listed today on the BSE and NSE. The opening price was Rs 1019 on the BSE and Rs 1096 on the NSE respectively. The company had issued 2.64 cr shares at Rs 1050. This is the second divestment by the government after shares of NHPC were offered at Rs 36 to the public. It may be mentioned that the retail interest in OIL India was poor as retail investors in general and HNI’s in particular lost money in the issue of NHPC. This mind you was after a lacklustre listing of the high profile issue from Adani Power.

Oil India is roughly 1/10th the size of ONGC and almost all analysts believed that looking at ONGC discovered price of around 1150 at the time of the IPO of OIL India at a price of Rs 1050, left nothing on the table. Yesterday the markets rallied strongly with the BSESENSEX gaining 159.91 points or 0.95% to close at 16852.91 points. The NSEINDEX gained a similar 47.90 points or 0.96% to close at 5006.85 points. The big gainer for the day was ONGC which gained Rs 32.35 points or 2.79% to close at Rs 1189.65.

The shares of Oil India were very actively traded and the interest in the stock was really amazing. The stock was trading at Rs 1145 on the BSE and Rs 1147 on the NSE at 10.15 am. The total traded volume in the first twenty minutes of trade was 1.22 cr shares or 46% of the shares offered. Surprisingly shares of ONGC also gained and were trading at Rs 1210 up 1.76 % for the day.