The National Securities Depository (NSDL), India’s largest depository, has filed a draft paper with the Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) for an initial public offering (IPO).

If its plans fructify, NSDL will be the second such entity to be listed after CDSL, which is now trading in the NSE.

The IPO will be entirely an offer for sale to the tune of up to 57,260,001 shares.

The selling shareholders are IDBI Bank (up to 22,220,000 shares), NSE (18,000,001 shares), up to 5,625,000 equity shares by Union Bank of India, up to 4,000,000 shares each by State Bank of India, and HDFC Bank, up to 3,415,000 shares by Administrator of the Specified Undertaking of the Unit Trust of India (SUUTI).

NSDL is a Sebi-registered market infrastructure institution. Following the introduction of the Depositories Act in 1996, it pioneered the dematerialisation of securities in India in November 1996.

As of March 31, it is the largest depository in India in terms of the number of issuers, number of active instruments, market share in demat value of settlement volume and value of assets held under custody.

During this period, it had over 31.46 million active demat accounts held with 283 depository participants, while its accounts holders were located in more than 99 per cent of the pin codes in India and 186 countries in the world.

NSDL said in the draft red herring prospectus that it has also leveraged its technological infrastructure to cater to the diverse needs of the securities market in India and introduced several additional products, e-services and ancillary value-added services and initiatives through NSDL and its subsidiaries, NSDL Database.