State-owned NHPC, a hydroelectric power generating company, revealed in a statement, that it would come out with its initial public offer, only after the market conditions improve.

Mr. SK Garg, Chairman and Managing Director of the company said, "IPO is on hold till market conditions stabilize."

Last year in October, the company has planned initial public offer (IPO) of 167 crore equity shares, which latter the company called off due to volatile market conditions.

The company has plans to raise funds for its future expansions and part finance the construction and development costs of certain of identified projects.

Shares of e-learning services provider Edserv Softsystems had a strong debut on the stock exchanges on Monday.

The company’s scrip got listed on Monday at Rs 55, down 8.33 per cent from its issue price of Rs 60 on the Bombay Stock Exchange, but later settled the day with whopping premium at Rs 137.55, up Rs 78 or 129 per cent.

During trading session, the scrip touched an intraday high of Rs 147 and intraday low of Rs 55 on BSE. The total traded quantity was 3,41,04,135 shares.

The initial public offer (IPO) of Chennai-based Edserv Softsystems of Rs 20 crore managed to sail through even while the Rs 44-crore IPO of Gemini Engi-Fab has been pulled off last week due to lack of investor confidence.

According to data revealed by National Stock Exchange, the IPO of EdServ Softsystems has received 51,49,000 bids as against issue size of 39,73,908 shares and got subscribed 1.30 times.

The price band for the issue was fixed between Rs 55 and Rs 60.

In a bid to discourage 'fraudulent siphoning' or diversion of funds in corporate sector, the government and capital market regulator has decided to scrutinize money raised through initial public offers (IPOs) during the period between 2004 and 2007.

Following the poor show by public offers and low-investor sentiment in the stock market, various companies in country raised just Rs 16,927 crores through initial public offers (IPOs) and follow-on public offers (FPOs).

It represents 63% decline in fund collection as compared to Rs 45,137 crore collected last year according to the report of research firm, Prime Database. Many companies have dropped idea to raise funds through public offer due to poor response from investors.

Alkali Metals, engaged in the business of manufacturing a range of fine chemicals, has got listed on the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) at a discount of 12.62% at Rs 90 as against its issue price of Rs 103.
 
The stock is assigned the scrip code 533029 and is placed in the `B` group on BSE.

At 10.04 a.m. on the BSE, the scrip was trading at Rs 122.50, up 18.93%, and about 357,466 shares got traded within minutes of its listing. The scrip also touched a high of Rs 137.70 and a low of Rs 90.