My favorite system to buy stocks is O'Neil's CANSLIM system. It manages downside risk while allowing you to participate in the upside. He has a book describing his system and many online tools to deploy it including many Indian stocks. AAII also lists a system using 5% earnings upwards revisions that has very high returns, but more volatility to the downside than CANSLIM. The second is well regarded in the investment community, but I have limited experience with it. www.investors.com is Willian O'Neil's website for individual investors. Mr. Oneil addresses the issue of IPOs in his book and when to buy them.

Source: Tarun Agrawal, W'91, WG'98

A company calculate minimum no. of share in a single application by multiplying upper cap of the price band by Rs.5000/-. so min. no of shares differ from issue to issue as price band is different in every case.

The minimum number of shares one can apply is mentioned in the application form.It differs from company to company depending on the price of the shares.

PAN is mandatory
Yes, a retail individual investor can bid for more then Rs 1 Lakhs in an IPO by applying in 'Non Institutional Investors' category. There is no upper limit for bidding amount in 'Non Institutional Investors' category.

Advantage:

You can apply for more then Rs 1 Lakhs and may get much better allocation then a retail bidder.

Disadvantage:

Non-institutional bidders have an allocation of 15% of shares of the total issue size in Book Build IPO's, while retail Individual investors has 35% (remaining 50% is for QIB's). As Non-institutional category has much smaller in size, issue usually oversubscribed much higher (then in retail category) and less shares allocation.