India Unveils $107 Million Tokenized Bond Pilot Linked to RBI's Wholesale CBDC

India has launched a $107 million tokenized bond pilot linked to the Reserve Bank of India's (RBI) wholesale central bank digital currency (CBDC). The pilot, called Demat 2.0, is being run by the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) and the RBI.

The pilot saw three companies complete issuances as securities regulators test a model that pairs distributed-ledger bonds with wholesale CBDC. REC, a state-owned lender, was the first to use the framework, raising 5 billion rupees from 18 investors in a Monday transaction. Two additional deals followed on Wednesday: Larsen & Toubro, the engineering group, raised 5 billion rupees from four investors, while IIFL, a non-bank financial company, sold 250 million rupees of bonds to one investor.

The scale of the first phase exceeds what had been reported in August. With L&T and IIFL also participating, the combined issuance is more than double the amount initially anticipated for REC. SEBI said lessons from the trial would help determine how broadly to deploy the framework.