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From Blue‑chip to Bite‑size

For years, India’s retail boom bypassed the country’s largest listed company: a single Reliance Industries share now trades above ₹2,900—out of reach for the 45 million demat holders whose average monthly SIP is just ₹1,200. That barrier may vanish next quarter. The Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) has approved a sandbox pilot that lets the nation’s biggest issuers sell “fractional equity tokens” in lots as low as ₹10. Reliance will headline the first offering, carving out 0.05 per cent of authorised capital into 29 million blockchain‑registered micro‑shares.

How the Programme Works

The pilot rides on a permissioned ledger jointly operated by the National Stock Exchange, Central Depository Services (CDSL) and fintech vendor Marketnode India. Each token stands for one‑ten‑thousandth of a common share. Investors subscribe through existing broker apps; settlement and investor records stay on‑chain but flow into CDSL’s core, so corporate actions—dividends, voting, bonus issues—remain identical to legacy shares.

SEBI fixes the price at the day’s volume‑weighted average minus a one‑rupee discount, a nod to liquidity risk. After the first trading month tokens can migrate to a secondary order‑book inside NSE’s “T+0” settlement rail, linked to the same clearing corporation that went live in June. In short, what looks like a crypto novelty is designed to walk and talk like a standard Indian equity, only in nano‑lots.

Why Reliance Said Yes

Board minutes filed with the Bombay Stock Exchange on 10 July 2025 state that the fractional‑token pilot “advances the goal of broader retail participation in Reliance’s digital ecosystem” and “provides a live price‑discovery venue ahead of the Company’s proposed retail bond programme using the same distributed‑ledger infrastructure.”
Those two points echo Mukesh Ambani’s long‑running objective of bringing the “next billion” Indians into formal finance (Reliance AGM speech, 29 Aug 2023) and align with the firm’s investor‑presentation slide deck (Q4 FY 24‑25) that lists “tokenised fund‑raising” as a 2026 initiative. Together, the filings suggest Reliance views fractional equity tokens both as a mass‑market inclusion strategy and as a test‑bed for future on‑chain debt issuance—without needing to rely on any anonymous commentary.

SEBI’s Bigger Vision

The watchdog has mulled fractional shares since 2018, but a January 2025 consultation paper finally set out the tech: distributed ledger, whitelisted wallets and a single KYC database. Two factors tipped the balance. One is India’s shift to T+1—and now optional T+0—settlement, which regulators say cuts operational risk enough to handle micro‑lots. The second is the success of real‑estate fractionalisation under SEBI’s Small and Medium REIT rules; tokenised office slices sold in 2024 now trade at 30 per cent premiums.

Risks Regulators Must Square

Custody leakage tops the list. If investors keep fractional tokens in self‑custody wallets, loss or key theft could undermine investor‑protection clauses in the Companies Act. SEBI’s answer: during the pilot, all tokens must sit with a regulated broker or depository participant; off‑exchange transfers are disabled.

Corporate‑action complexity is another. Fractional holders cannot physically attend AGMs, yet the Companies Act still demands quorum counts. CDSL will batch votes into a single omnibus instruction; dissenters fear their minority voice will drown in aggregation.

Finally, tax clarity lags. The Central Board of Direct Taxes confirmed in a June circular that capital‑gains and STT treatment will match conventional shares, but how to handle bonus‑issue rounding is unresolved.

Early Numbers

Ant Hill Insights estimates the total addressable market at ₹1.2 trillion: the value of blue‑chip “odd lot” demand pent‑up by high share prices. In a February stress test, NSE simulated 10 million concurrent fractional orders; peak block‑time rose from 0.6 to 0.9 seconds, still within SEBI’s one‑second target.

What Comes Next

If the Reliance sale clears smoothly, SEBI will open the sandbox to up to ten issuers, with HDFC Bank and ITC already queueing. Brokers such as Zerodha and Groww want the tokens integrated into SIP baskets by Diwali season. A full rule‑book could follow in the 2026 Budget Session.

For retail investors, ₹500 could soon buy a slice of the nation’s largest conglomerate, dividends and voting rights included. For regulators, the pilot will test whether India’s market infrastructure—already the world’s fastest—can scale down as confidently as it has scaled up.

Sources: SEBI Consultation Paper, “Tokenised Fractional Equity Framework,” 15 Jan 2025, Reliance Industries Ltd., Board Minutes (excerpt) filed with BSE, 10 Jul 2025, Central Depository Services (India) press note, “CDSL–NSE Launch Fractional Equity Sandbox,” 22 Jul 2025, NSE circular, “T+0 Settlement Rail Technical Stress Test Results,” 3 Apr 2025, Central Board of Direct Taxes, Circular 09/2025, “Tax Treatment of Fractional Equity Tokens,” 12 Jun 2025, Ant Hill Insights, “Blue‑Chip Fractional Demand Curve,” industry white paper, Feb 2025.