How Hydropower Share Offers in Nepal Actually Work: Allotment Categories, Application Mechanics, and What to Check Before You Pay

Last reviewed: 6 October 2026. This page explains the process. It is not an offer report and it names no company. You will also find no quota percentage, no minimum application amount, no promoter-to-public ratio and no timeline figures here, because those numbers belong to one specific offer and change from issue to issue. Where they matter, they are written into that offer's own documents, and that is where you read them.

What a hydropower IPO (initial public offering) is, and who can apply

Most hydropower projects in Nepal are developed by companies, and companies raise long-term money by selling shares. When a project sells those shares to the public rather than to a small group of founders, it does so as a regulated public issue. That is what people generally mean when they go looking for a hydropower IPO in Nepal.

These issues are regulated by the Securities Board of Nepal (SEBON). An issue has to be approved, a prospectus has to be published, and applications have to move through licensed channels. The share-holding records and settlement side sits with CDS and Clearing Limited (CDSC), which operates the central depository system in the country.

Who can apply is not a general rule you can memorise once and reuse. Each issue defines its own categories, and SEBON's framework sets out how those categories are handled. Depending on the offer, applications may be invited from the general public, from residents of the project area or otherwise affected people, from employees, and from institutional applicants such as mutual funds. Whether a category exists at all in a given offer, who falls inside it, and how many shares a person may apply for are all set out in that offer's documents. Read them for the issue in front of you.

The allotment categories, and the trap in the word 'community'

Two phrases get used as if they mean the same thing, and they usually do not.

Local or affected-area allocation

This is a project- and document-specific category. The prospectus and the instrument enabling the issue define who counts, and the definition can differ between projects. It is common to see a distance-based or ward-based description, a share ceiling per person, and separate treatment for land-losers versus other local residents, but none of that is portable. A figure you read in one prospectus tells you nothing reliable about the next one. If you see a radius or a ceiling quoted somewhere with no document behind it, treat it as decoration.

Community investment in general usage

In everyday Nepali usage, 'community hydropower investment' often means something looser: local cooperatives, savings groups or informal pools of neighbours putting money into a project, sometimes through private placement rather than a public issue. That is a different channel with different rules, and it is not an entitlement created by a public offer. If someone tells you the community has a right to a slice of a public issue, ask which clause of which document says so. If there is no clause, there is no such right that we can confirm.

Application mechanics, from demat to allotment to refund

The pipeline is roughly the same each time, though the details move.

Start with a demat account held with a depository participant. In Nepal you can open one through a licensed broker, or through a commercial bank acting as a depository participant, and both routes are common. The account details need to be live and correctly matched to your bank and citizenship or identity records before an issue opens, because fixing mismatches mid-issue is unpleasant.

When an issue opens, the issuer names the channel through which applications will be accepted, and SEBON publishes its own notices about the issue. In recent years most public issues have taken applications through MeroShare, CDSC's web platform, under the C-ASBA facility. That is the bank-blocked model, where the money stays in your account and is only blocked until allotment instead of being debited when you apply. It is the common mechanism right now, not a universal one: some offerings, and some application categories within an offering, have used a cash-deposit route where the amount is paid into a designated account or a collection centre. Confirm which one applies from the notice in force at that moment rather than from what happened last year.

After the application window closes, allotment happens on the basis stated in the prospectus, and the balance is released back to unsuccessful applicants. Shares that are allotted are credited to your demat account. Being allotted is not the same as being listed: the shares become tradeable only once they list on the Nepal Stock Exchange (NEPSE), and the gap between allotment and listing can be substantial. When you want to check what actually happened, the two places to look are SEBON's published public-issue notices and the allotment-result notice published by the issue manager for that offer. Both are published documents, not screenshots doing the rounds on social media.

Dates in these notices are often given in Bikram Sambat, sometimes alongside the Gregorian equivalent. Convert both ways before you decide you have time.

Pre-payment checklist, and where the detail lives

Four things worth confirming before money leaves your account. This is a short index, not a second checklist. The full item-by-item version, with what to look for on each line, is on the companion page linked below.

• Is the issue actually open on the day you are reading this?
• Which applicant category do you fall into?
• Are your funds blocked or debited, and through which channel?
• How and roughly when are refunds or releases handled?

The detailed walkthrough sits on our companion page: Hydropower Share Pre-Payment Checklist. Our explainer on brokerage and demat accounts in Nepal covers the account set-up side in more detail, and the hydropower category hub collects the rest of our coverage. For individual issues we have written about, see our dated coverage rather than this page.

Three risks that come from the mechanics, not the market

The prospectus does not promise you shares. It sets out the process and the basis on which allotment will be decided. Applying is not a reservation, and a popular issue can be heavily oversubscribed. Anyone telling you allotment is assured is not describing the document.

Ownership structure is worth reading, not guessing. Promoter holdings, lock-in periods, pledged shares and expected free float are disclosed in the document. These determine how much of the company is actually available to trade and how concentrated control is. Read what is written there, and be sceptical of figures that appear only in social media posts.

Allotment is not listing. Once shares list, liquidity may be thin, and the price you can sell at is set by whoever is buying that day. A locked-in promoter holding and a small free float both affect how easily you can exit. None of this is a reason to buy or avoid anything; it is simply what the mechanics imply.

Not investment advice

This article explains process only. It is not investment advice, it recommends nothing, and it names no issuer, price or target. Every procedural claim here should be checked against the primary documents: the prospectus and issue notice for the offer you are looking at, SEBON's published notices and guidelines in the version in force, and your broker's or depository's current instructions. We do not accept payment from brokers, and nothing on this page is a referral.

Because issue rules and platform behaviour change, we re-check this page against SEBON's current published material rather than letting it age quietly. Note the review date at the top and treat anything older with caution.