India’s Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) has formally launched Demat 2.0, a pilot programme for tokenized corporate bonds, after three initial issuers raised a combined ₹1,025 crore (approximately $107.2 million) on a private permissioned distributed ledger.
The issuances were completed just before SEBI’s September 10 launch announcement. State-owned lender REC Ltd. raised ₹500 crore on September 7 from 18 investors, Larsen & Toubro raised another ₹500 crore on September 9, and non-bank lender IIFL Finance raised ₹25 crore on September 9.
Under the framework, tokenized bonds are linked to the Reserve Bank of India’s wholesale central bank digital currency through a Unified Market Interface, enabling atomic delivery-versus-payment settlement. Smart contracts can automate interest payments and redemptions, while SEBI says the instruments keep their legal terms, credit ratings, debenture trustees, listing rules and investor protections. Investors can hold tokens in existing Demat accounts without new know-your-customer checks.
The pilot is being run on ledgers operated by India’s statutory depositories NSDL and CDSL, targeting a corporate bond market of roughly $620 billion. SEBI has described Demat 2.0 as a three-stage rollout: institutional issuance comes first, followed by secondary-market trading and retail access, with possible expansion to more regulated entities and instruments later.
