MSE facilitates India's first tokenised corporate bond under SEBI's Demat 2.0 pilot

Metropolitan Stock Exchange of India (MSE) has facilitated the country's first tokenised corporate bond issuance under the Securities and Exchange Board of India's (SEBI) Demat 2.0 pilot, a regulatory sandbox initiative aimed at modernising India's debt market infrastructure.

The bond was issued by IIFL Finance Ltd through MSE's Electronic Bond Platform (MSE EBP), with Trust Investment Advisors Pvt Ltd serving as the arranger. The issuance marks the first instance of a corporate bond being issued natively on a distributed ledger in India, with ownership records held with statutory depositories and settlement conducted in Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC).

The pilot was launched at Global Fintech Fest 2026 in Mumbai on September 11 by SEBI Chairman Tuhin Kanta Pandey and Reserve Bank of India Governor Sanjeev Malhotra, alongside key stakeholders from market infrastructure intermediaries, financial markets, and the fintech ecosystem.

The initiative operates within existing regulated market infrastructure and is designed to deliver faster settlement, greater transparency, and wider market access in India's corporate bond segment, areas where the debt market has historically faced structural friction.

MSE Managing Director and CEO Latika S Kundu described the pilot as an important step in shaping India's debt markets, noting that tokenisation combines technology with established market infrastructure to improve efficiency and security in capital formation.

The Demat 2.0 framework signals a broader regulatory push to bring blockchain-based instruments into India's mainstream financial markets under supervised conditions.

www.thehindubusinessline.com, dt. 12-09-2026