Mumbai: The Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) is reviewing framework for short selling and securities lending and borrowing (SLB) to improve market liquidity and price discovery, chairman Tuhin Kanta Pandey said Saturday.
Short selling allows investors to sell borrowed shares, while SLB provides mechanism for lending and borrowing securities. Review is part of regulator's broader effort to deepen capital markets following demands from market participants, Pandey said at event.
Sebi will also address need for parallel clearing in tender offers, share buybacks and offers for sale, which adds to costs. "We are fixing this, to improve capital efficiency and lower compliance burden," Pandey said.
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Sebi is exploring graded compliance requirements for stockbrokers based on scale, client exposure and reliance on technology, developing market making framework. It is also revising rules for depository participants to simplify compliance and strengthen safeguards against fraud, he said.
The regulator plans to extend automated give-up and take-up facility to custodial clients, including portfolio management services and alternative investment funds, in cash segment. The move would prevent funds from remaining blocked while awaiting custodial confirmation. Sebi is in process of implementing modified closing auction session (CAS). It also plans to extend its Samuhik Prati-Vedan Manch reporting platform to depositories, allowing investors to submit and track complaints via single window.
Currently, India has around 140 wineries, of which only 50-60 are fully operational, said Neeraj Agarwal, Nashik-based wine consultant and former head of Sula Vineyards, home to India's largest winery. The overwhelming majority of factories, he added, are concentrated in Maharashtra's Nashik wine belt, regarded as country's wine capital, with smaller presence in Karnataka and select states.
"Of late, UP has emerged as a new hotspot, with demand for wine equipment growing, the fact that the emergence of fruit-based wineries beyond grapes could redefine India's wine map," he said.
For Gurdeep Singh, CEO of Ghaziabad-based Fabtech Innovations, the bigger opportunity may lie closer home. The company, which primarily makes food-processing equipment, has been manufacturing wine-processing machinery for more than a decade and exported a few machines to a new winery in Uganda last year.
But I believe our growth will come increasingly from domestic wineries, provided more states relax their policies and make it easier to set up new wineries," Singh said. He added that Fabtech has already supplied machinery to a newly established winery in Muzaffarnagar.
While global wine industry has shrunk in recent years, the Indian market is expected to expand at a compound annual growth rate of nearly 15%, rising from $890 million in 2025 to $2.6 billion by 2033, according to Grand View Horizon report published in March.
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Report identifies India's large young population, rapid urbanisation and growing perception of wine as status symbol as key factors likely to drive growth.
Analytically, SEBI revamp aims to bring short selling in line with global norms - US allows naked short selling with safeguards. In India, short selling limited, but after Adani-Hindenburg, need transparent rules.
If graded compliance, small brokers benefit, reducing cost.
Tags: #SEBI #ShortSelling #SLB #TuhinKantaPandey #CapitalEfficiency #MarketLiquidity #Compliance #Depository #CAS #AdaniHindenburg