Modi Pushes for Tokenisation to Unlock India's Illiquid Wealth

India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi has highlighted the importance of tokenisation in his inaugural address at the Global Fintech Fest (GFF) 2026, which represents ownership rights to physical assets through programmable digital units.

This technology holds the potential to digitise the ownership, transfer, and movement of value, much like how the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) successfully digitised money transfers.

Recently, REC Limited issued India's first pilot of tokenized corporate bonds worth ₹500 crore on September 7, 2026, using blockchain and the Reserve Bank of India's wholesale digital rupee under the SEBI Regulatory Sandbox framework.

India has a massive base of real-world assets, with Indian households holding around 30,000 tonnes of gold and domestic agriculture producing millions of tonnes of commodities annually. However, a substantial portion of this wealth remains illiquid or only partially integrated into formal financial markets.