India's Securities and Exchange Board: Three institutions raise $1.072 billion through tokenized corporate bonds

Odaily reports: The Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) stated that under the Demat 2.0 pilot, three issuers have raised a cumulative 102.5 billion rupees (approximately $1.072 billion) through tokenized corporate bonds. The pilot utilizes distributed ledger technology to issue, hold, and settle corporate bonds.

Among them, REC was the first to complete a 50 billion rupee fundraising on September 7, with 18 investors participating; L&T raised 50 billion rupees on September 9, subscribed by 4 investors; IIFL raised 2.5 billion rupees on the same day, subscribed by 1 investor.

SEBI stated that Demat 2.0 records corporate bonds as native digital tokens on depository institutions' distributed ledgers, and connects to wholesale central bank digital currency (CBDC) through the Reserve Bank of India's (RBI) Unified Market Interface, enabling atomic settlement of bonds and funds, which is expected to shorten post-issuance fund settlement time from the traditional 2 to 3 days to same-day.

SEBI emphasized that tokenized bonds do not constitute a new category of corporate bonds, and their ISIN, issuer obligations, coupons, maturity dates, covenants, ratings, and investor rights remain consistent with traditional electronic corporate bonds. Currently, the first phase of the pilot is aimed at institutional issuance, with secondary trading and retail investor participation to be advanced in subsequent phases. (The Block)