There is no exchange, and that changes everything else
An unlisted share is equity in a company that has not listed on a stock exchange. It is bought from an existing shareholder — an employee, an early investor, a fund reducing a position — rather than from the company itself.
Because there is no exchange, there is no continuous market and no market price. A price is negotiated between the two sides of each deal. Figures shown as indicative levels on this site are levels at which deals were quoted or recorded on the dates stated, not quotes you can trade against.
Nothing refreshes those levels automatically. There is no closing auction and no feed; a level is one counterparty's word on the day they gave it.
The risks are different in kind, not only in degree
There may be no buyer when you want to sell. This is the first risk and it does not have a workaround: an asset with no exchange has no standing bid.
Valuations are negotiated rather than discovered. Two people can price the same company very differently on the same day, and neither is wrong in the way an off-market price can be wrong.
Disclosure is materially thinner than for listed companies. A private company publishes what it chooses to, which is why so many figures in our catalogue are blank — a blank means undisclosed, not zero.
There is no assurance that any company will list, that it will list at a particular price, or that any exit will be available at all. A draft prospectus filed with SEBI is a matter of public record; it is not a commitment to list.
If a company does list
Shares acquired before an initial public offering are typically subject to a lock-in after listing under applicable SEBI regulations, during which they cannot be sold. The period depends on the category of shareholder and the specifics of the issue.
A listing is not automatically a gain. The listing price can be below the price paid before it, and the lock-in means that is not necessarily something a holder can act on.