Why you did not get an allotment

When the retail category is oversubscribed, SEBI requires that the minimum lot be allotted by a draw of lots rather than pro rata. The reasoning is fairness: a proportionate split of a heavily oversubscribed issue would hand everyone a fraction of a lot, which is not a tradeable quantity.

So every retail application is one ticket, whatever its size. An application for one lot and an application for thirteen lots have the same chance of winning the draw for a single lot.

Until April 2022, the NII category was allotted proportionately, which rewarded very large applications and made leveraged HNI bidding a strategy. SEBI changed it: the minimum application in the NII category is now also allotted by draw of lots when oversubscribed, with the balance proportionate.

This matters on the SME board, where the two-lot minimum usually costs more than ₹2 lakh and therefore bids as non-institutional rather than retail.

• More PANs — a spouse, a parent, an adult child, each with their own demat and bank account. This is legitimate; multiple applications from one PAN are not.
• Applying at cut-off, so the bid cannot be eliminated on price.
• Approving the mandate early, so a technical failure has time to be noticed.
• Choosing less crowded issues. A 2× subscribed issue gives roughly even odds; a 100× subscribed one gives roughly one in a hundred.
• A shareholder quota, where the issue carves one out for holders of the parent company — far less contested than the general retail pot.

What does not help: applying for more lots, applying on day one rather than day three, or using a particular broker. The draw does not know or care.