New Delhi, June 14: Led by aggressive Foreign Institutional Investors (FIIs), individual investors have started coming to the market in hordes to bid for Maruti shares, booking about 5.7 crore shares so far. According to sources involved in Maruti's public offering, which opened on June 12, individual investors comprising retail buyers and high net worth individuals accounted for a significant 30 per cent of the total bids of over 19 crore shares received till yesterday, the second day of the public offering.
The book-building offering received a tremendous response from FII's, who bid for the largest chunk comprising about 13 crore shares of the public offering by the auto major, where Government is in the process of offloading 25 per cent stake in the capital market.
The massive response from retail investors has raised Government's hopes of setting aside a higher share for the segment. At present, a minimum of 25 per cent has been kept aside for retail investors while 15 per cent has been reserved for high net worth individuals and the balance for qualified institutional buyers.

Sources said the various limits may be revised to allow individuals to buy as much as 70 to 80 per cent of the offering.
About 7.2 crore shares have been put on the block as part of the public offering, although Government can exercise a green-shoe option retaining 10 per cent of oversubscription.
In such a case the total size of the offering would go upto 7.9 crore shares.
Sources said with 30 per cent of the bookings coming from individual investors on the second day of the offering, the final participation from this segment could be much higher when the issue closes on June 19. Bureau Report