There has been a record investment from Chandigarh of approximately Rs 1,000 crore from both retailers as well as institutional investors. According to sources, more than 3 lakh applications were received by the Reliance Money, Master Capital, Carvey Stock Brokings, Vikson Finance and Investment and other firms in the city. The issue is likely to be listed in the second week of February this year.

With people withdrawing money from banks in droves to invest in the IPO, the sensex has taken a plunge.

The sensex, which was above 21,000 points early this week on January 14, today closed below 19,000 on 18, 995.06 points.

The enthusiasm among the residents of Chandigarh could be judged from the fact that thousands of new demat accounts were opened in the city in the last fortnight so that the people could invest their money in the Reliance IPO. With the ceiling of investment limited to Rs 1 lakh for an individual, many people opened the demat accounts in the name of their relatives to invest more money.

Many residents even went for personal loans to invest in the IPO, while there were offers of surrogate investment in the form of people with demat account offering money to others to invest.

“In all probability, there has been an investment of more than Rs 500 crore from the Chandigarh region alone,” said V Kumar, director of Vikson Finance and Investment,  a leading broking firm of the city. Kumar said they have refused to open more demat accounts for the time being. “We have overworked in the last fortnight. We had received as many as 500 applications per day to open demat accounts. As it takes at least 10 minutes for us to open a new account, since Thursday we have stopped accepting the application,” said Kumar.