SEBI Demat 2.0 pilot settles ₹1,025 crore of tokenised bonds
REC, L&T and IIFL raised about $107 million via corporate bonds issued as blockchain tokens, paid in the RBI's wholesale digital rupee and settled same day.
The first bond issues under Demat 2.0, a pilot run by the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI), have been completed. Instead of passing through the traditional depository system, the corporate bonds were created as digital tokens on a shared ledger. Three issuers raised ₹1,025 crore between them, or about $107 million.
The three issuers
- REC Ltd.: ₹500 crore (about $52.3M) from 18 investors
- L&T Ltd.: ₹500 crore (about $52.3M) from 4 investors
- IIFL: ₹25 crore (about $2.6M) from a single investor
Paid in digital rupees
Investors paid for the bonds in the RBI's wholesale digital rupee (e₹), the version of India's central bank digital currency meant for institutions. Payments ran through a Unified Market Interface, so the bonds and the money moved at exactly the same moment. This is known as atomic delivery-versus-payment: neither side can hand over its part without receiving the other.
The result is no settlement risk and same-day access to the money for issuers, compared with the usual wait of two to three days.
SEBI explained how the ledger works:
"On the shared ledger, the details of a bondholder are visible to all authorised institutions at once, and payment in e₹ reaches the bondholders' CBDC wallets on the due date," SEBI said.
The road ahead
SEBI plans a three-phase rollout. Institutional issuance comes first. Secondary trading and access for retail investors will follow, both under SEBI's Regulatory Sandbox. The RBI provides the wholesale CBDC rail, which plugs into SEBI's distributed-ledger system.
Why this matters for India
The pilot is among the most practical uses of the digital rupee so far, and it places India among the countries linking tokenised securities directly to a central bank settlement layer.
For crypto traders, this is not a story about buying or selling tokens. It is about the plumbing of financial markets. It does, however, show clearly how Indian regulators want blockchain to be used: inside the regulated system, not around it.
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