India Begins Tokenizing Its $620 Billion Corporate Bond Market
India has launched a pilot to issue and settle corporate bonds as blockchain tokens, using the RBI-backed digital rupee. SEBI and the RBI unveiled “Demat 2.0,” which places tokenized bonds on a private ledger run by the depositories NSDL and CDSL. Three issuers have already used the system: REC raised 500 crore rupees, Larsen & Toubro raised 500 crore rupees, and IIFL Finance raised 25 crore rupees, totaling about $107 million. The platform connects the bond token ledger with the wholesale digital rupee through a Unified Market Interface, enabling atomic settlement so bond issuance and payment happen simultaneously. The framework keeps existing legal protections and market rules intact, while allowing investors to hold tokens in normal Demat accounts without new KYC checks. Future phases may add secondary trading and eventually retail access.
