Indian Capital Markets on WebNotes

Discount brokers in India: complete guide

Mon, 18 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

A discount broker in India is a SEBI-registered stockbroker that charges a flat fee per executed order (typically Rs 20 or zero) rather than a percentage of turnover, and serves clients primarily through digital platforms (web and mobile apps) without research advisory, branch networks, or relationship managers. The discount-broker category was pioneered in India by Zerodha in 2010 when Nithin Kamath and Nikhil Kamath pivoted the firm from a percentage-commission model to a flat Rs 20 per executed order, undercutting the prevailing percentage-of-turnover commissions of the incumbent full-service brokers by an order of magnitude on typical retail trade sizes.

How SEBI regulates Indian capital markets

Mon, 18 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

The Securities and Exchange Board of India is the statutory regulator for the Indian capital markets, established under the SEBI Act 1992 following the Harshad Mehta securities scam of 1992. SEBI’s mandate is “to protect the interests of investors in securities, to promote the development of, and to regulate the securities market and matters connected therewith”. The organisation operates from its headquarters in Mumbai with regional offices across India, employing approximately 1,000 staff across legal, market-policy, investigation, and enforcement functions. Its budget is funded through fees levied on registered intermediaries (stockbrokers, mutual funds, investment advisers) and on transaction-level levies that flow from the exchanges.

Mutual funds in India: complete guide

Mon, 18 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

A mutual fund in India is a pooled-investment vehicle operated by a SEBI-registered Asset Management Company (AMC) that issues units to investors against money received and invests the pooled corpus in securities according to a published scheme objective. The Indian mutual fund industry has grown from a single state-controlled trust in 1963 to over 44 SEBI-registered AMCs managing more than Rs 65 lakh crore in assets under management (AUM) by 2025, with industry folios crossing 200 million and unique investor count approaching 50 million. The industry is regulated by the Securities and Exchange Board of India under the SEBI (Mutual Funds) Regulations 1996 and self-regulated through the industry codes published by the Association of Mutual Funds in India (AMFI) .

Stock exchanges in India

Mon, 18 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Stock exchanges in India are the SEBI-recognised market infrastructure institutions (MIIs) that operate the trading, price-discovery, and order-matching functions for listed securities including equity, debt, derivatives, currency, and commodity contracts. The Indian stock exchange ecosystem comprises two principal equity exchanges (the National Stock Exchange and the Bombay Stock Exchange ), a primary commodity exchange (Multi Commodity Exchange ), and other specialised exchanges including NCDEX (agricultural commodities), MSEI (Metropolitan Stock Exchange), and India International Exchange (GIFT City).