Reliance Power, which rode a wave of investor euphoria to stage India's biggest initial public offering in January, on Monday blamed the condition of global markets after its stock plunged as much as 21 per cent on its trading debut.

The fall in the shares of the company, whose $3bn IPO sold out within a minute of opening in mid-January, marked a dramatic end to a recent boom in Indian equities issues, which some had compared with the 2000 internet bubble because of a surge in start-up companies listing at rich valuations.

"This decline is not specific to Reliance Power and instead simply mirrors the sharp meltdown in global capital markets over the past three weeks," Reliance Power said on Monday night.

The company's shares on Monday closed at Rs372, down about 17 per cent from the IPO price of Rs450, after hitting an earlier low of Rs355.05.

Reliance Power has plans to build more than 28,000 megawatts of power generation capacity over the next 10 years, although the company has no operating assets and negligible cashflow.

The listing, at the level on which it was priced, potentially made controlling shareholder Anil Ambani the world's richest Indian - ahead of his brother Mukesh Ambani, and Lakshmi Mittal, although critics said it was overpriced.

The Ambani name attracted more than 4m institutional and retail investors, turning the company into one of India's most widely-owned stocks.

Mr Ambani is the son of the late Dhirubhai Ambani, one of India's most successful entrepreneurs and founder of its biggest private company, Reliance Industries.

"This is like a complete severing of investor confidence [in the Ambanis]," said one retail investor, S Arun Natish, a marketing manager in Mumbai.

Reliance Power said the stock was only matching falls in the market since the flotation.

India's benchmark Sensex Index has fallen about 20 per cent since the IPO, on Monday alone losing 4.78 per cent to close at 16,630.91 points.

Last week, two Indian companies staging high-profile IPOs had to abandon them mid-way due to lack of demand - shocking a market that only last month was the hottest in the world for equity capital-raising.