India Unveils Demat 2.0, Tokenizes Corporate Bonds Worth $116 Million

India's Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) and Reserve Bank of India (RBI) have launched Demat 2.0, a pilot infrastructure for issuing, holding, trading, and settling corporate bonds as digital tokens.

Demat 2.0 is integrated directly into the nation's existing regulated securities market, unlike many tokenization experiments built on standalone blockchain platforms.

The system allows corporate bonds to be created natively on a distributed ledger maintained by market infrastructure institutions, with ownership records held by the country's statutory depositories.

Three companies have already issued tokenized bonds worth a total of ₹1,025 crore (or $116 million), led by REC Limited, which raised ₹500 crore from 18 investors on September 7.