An Offer for Sale (OFS) is a form of share sale. OFS mechanism facilitates the promoters of an already listed company to sell or dilute their existing shareholdings through an exchange based bidding platform to meet the minimum public shareholding requirements in terms of Securities Contracts (Regulation) Rules.

Any nonpromoter shareholder of eligible companies (top 200 companies by market capitalization) holding at least 10% of share capital may also offer shares through the OFS mechanism.

OFS platform is an order collection system. Here the buyer needs to provide with a bid. There is a floor price, decided by the company, below which the bids cannot be placed. At the end of the bidding process the shares are allocated to the bidders. In OFS transactions, Investors can only buy shares, but cannot sell shares unlike the normal market

Investors can buy shares in OFS through existing Trading Members of NSE. They will have to provide bids to the Trading Member specifying the quantity and the price at which they are willing to bid for a given issue. Trading members essentially means the brokerage house with whom investor has demat and trading account

To buy shares offered under an OFS, investors can login to their online accounts with brokerage houses (in case their account is online) or get in touch with the brokerage firm to place their orders (if the account is not online)

There is a Floor price or a base price defined for the OFS. Investors can place price bids at any price greater than or equal to the floor price announced. In addition to price bids, "Sellers" may provide retail investors option to bid at "cut-off", where the allocation to retail investors shall be made based on the cut-off price determined in the non-retail category. The cut-off mechanism is similar in OFS as it is in case of an IPO. There is no minimum bidding quantity in case of an OFS unlike an IPO. Investors can place bid even for 1 equity share.

As far as OFS allotment status is concerned, the stock exchanges share allotment report with Trading Members (i.e. Brokerage firms) at the end of the day i.e. after 6:00 P.M. on the day of OFS. Investors can get the information from their trading members on the same day

An Offer for Sale (OFS) is a form of share sale. OFS mechanism facilitates the promoters of an already listed company to sell or dilute their existing shareholdings through an exchange based bidding platform to meet the minimum public shareholding requirements in terms of Securities Contracts (Regulation) Rules.

Any nonpromoter shareholder of eligible companies (top 200 companies by market capitalization) holding at least 10% of share capital may also offer shares through the OFS mechanism.

Except the listed companies, all market participants like individuals, mutual funds, foreign portfolio investors (FPIs/FIIs), insurance companies, corporates, other qualified institutional bidders (QIBs), HUFs, NRIs etc. can bid/participate in the OFS process to buy the shares

The Offer for Sale (OFS) of IT player Polaris Consulting Software received a rather welcoming response from the investors.

The offer, which was open for general investors on 8-Dec-2016 and for retail investors on 9-Dec-2016, was subscribed 3 times according to NSE website. The OFS was consisting of 377,200 equity shares offered at a floor price of Rs.130/- per equity share

The cut-off price determined on the first day of OFS (08-Dec-2016) on the basis of bids received in the general category was Rs.138/-. Polaris Consulting & Services Limited, formerly Polaris FT, is a provider of financial technology products, legacy modernization services and consulting for core banking, corporate banking, wealth & asset management and insurance