KD NEWS SERVICE
MUMBAI, Sep 17: The National Stock Exchange of India (NSE) has marked a significant milestone in the evolution of India’s corporate bond market with the successful implementation of tokenisation technology for corporate bonds on its Electronic Bidding Platform (NSE EBP), enabling the country’s first-ever tokenised corporate bond issuances aggregating ₹1,000 crore.
The development, implemented under the SEBI Regulatory Sandbox Framework, represents a major step towards bringing distributed ledger technology (DLT) into India’s regulated capital-market infrastructure and exploring new ways of making securities issuance, settlement and lifecycle management more efficient and transparent.
The technology was formally unveiled on September 10, 2026, by Reserve Bank of India Governor Sanjay Malhotra and Securities and Exchange Board of India Chairman Tuhin Kanta Pandey at the Global FinTech Fest 2026 in Mumbai.
The first tokenised corporate bond issuance was undertaken by REC Limited on the NSE EBP platform. REC raised ₹500 crore through the issue, comprising a base issue of ₹100 crore and a green shoe option of ₹400 crore. The issue attracted an overall subscription of 7.9 times the base issue, with REC accepting ₹500 crore at a 7.30% coupon rate.
The transaction was followed by Larsen & Toubro Limited, which raised another ₹500 crore through a tokenised corporate bond issuance on NSE EBP on September 9. Together, the two issuances took the value of tokenised corporate bonds enabled through NSE EBP to ₹1,000 crore.
The transactions also demonstrated the participation of a diverse set of institutional investors in the emerging digital securities ecosystem. Participants in the REC issuance included State Bank of India, SBI DFHI, Larsen & Toubro, Aditya Birla Finance, HDFC Mutual Fund, Taurus Finsec, The Wealth Company Mutual Fund and Central Depository Services (India), among others.
A broad group of financial institutions also acted as arrangers for the REC transaction, including A.K. Capital Services, Axis Bank, HDFC Bank, ICICI Bank, ICICI Securities Primary Dealership, PNB Gilts, SBI Capital Markets, STCI Primary Dealer, Taurus Corporate Advisory Services, Trust Investment Advisors and Yes Bank.
The subsequent L&T issuance further demonstrated that tokenisation could be extended beyond a single issuer and transaction. Investors included State Bank of India, Yes Bank, HDFC Mutual Fund, SBI Mutual Fund and National Securities Depository, while Trust Investment Advisors, Axis Bank and Yes Bank acted as arrangers.
DLT enters the corporate bond lifecycle
At the heart of the initiative is tokenisation, through which securities can be represented and managed digitally using Distributed Ledger Technology.
Unlike conventional systems in which different stages of a securities transaction may depend on multiple records and reconciliation processes, tokenisation has the potential to create a digitally represented security that can be managed across its lifecycle through a shared and programmable infrastructure.
According to NSE, the technology is designed to facilitate atomic settlement, enhance transparency and improve operational efficiency across the securities lifecycle while leveraging India’s existing digital settlement infrastructure.
The significance of the initiative extends beyond the two individual bond issues. Corporate bonds are an important source of funding for large companies and financial institutions, and improvements in issuance and settlement infrastructure can potentially reduce friction across the market while strengthening transparency and operational processes.
The use of tokenisation in a regulated environment also provides an opportunity to test how emerging technologies can work alongside India’s established financial-market architecture without compromising regulatory oversight.
NSE positions itself at the intersection of capital markets and technology
Commenting on the development, Viral Mody, Executive Director – Vertical 1 (Critical Operations), NSE, said the exchange remained focused on technology-led innovation in India’s capital markets.
He described the successful implementation of tokenisation for corporate bonds, coupled with the first tokenised bond issuances by REC and L&T on NSE EBP, as an important milestone in the development of regulated digital-market infrastructure.
Mody also highlighted the potential of emerging technologies to evolve from experimental applications into scalable solutions for regulated markets.
The initiative comes against the backdrop of growing global interest in tokenised financial assets, as exchanges, financial institutions and regulators explore whether distributed ledger technologies can improve efficiency in areas ranging from issuance and settlement to ownership records and asset servicing.
For India, the development is particularly significant because it builds on an already highly digitised securities-market ecosystem. Rather than creating a parallel market infrastructure, the NSE initiative seeks to introduce tokenisation within an established and regulated framework.
From experiment to market infrastructure
The use of the SEBI Regulatory Sandbox Framework is an important component of the initiative. Regulatory sandboxes allow financial-market innovations to be tested in a controlled environment before wider adoption, enabling regulators and market participants to assess their operational, technological and regulatory implications.
The ₹1,000-crore milestone therefore provides an early demonstration of how tokenised debt securities can function in a real-world institutional funding environment.
The participation of major banks, mutual funds, financial institutions, arrangers and depositories in the transactions also indicates that the experiment has involved multiple layers of the capital-market ecosystem rather than being confined to a technology provider or issuer.
NSE said the initiative reflects its commitment to developing market infrastructure that is trusted, resilient, transparent and responsive to the evolving requirements of issuers, investors and other market participants.
The exchange also pointed to the emphasis placed on tokenisation by Prime Minister Narendra Modi at the Global FinTech Fest, underscoring the government’s broader focus on emerging financial technologies and their potential applications in India’s financial system.
With the first two tokenised corporate bond transactions now completed, the next phase will be to determine how far the technology can be scaled across the wider debt market. Its longer-term significance will depend on factors including investor adoption, interoperability, regulatory evolution, operational efficiency and the ability of market participants to integrate tokenised securities into existing financial infrastructure.
For India’s capital markets, however, the transition has already moved beyond a technology demonstration. A ₹1,000-crore issuance milestone places tokenised corporate bonds firmly on the country’s financial-technology map and opens a new chapter in the digitalisation of the debt market.
