India's markets regulator will review its delisting framework in an effort to ease capital market processes, its chairman said at a summit on Friday.
* "A well-developed capital market must provide fair entry and fair exit," chairman Tuhin Kanta Pandey said.
* The Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) has rolled out a series of reforms over the last few years to make the country's capital markets more efficient and attractive to investors, including faster trade settlements and streamlined registration for foreign investors.
* In 2024, the regulator permitted the delisting of companies via a fixed-price route, where shareholders are offered a pre-set exit price. The mechanism serves as an alternative to the reverse book-building process, which determines the exit price through investor bids.
* The regulator also approved a voluntary delisting framework last year for public sector companies where controlling shareholders owned more than 90%.
* SEBI will also work with other regulators to simplify know-your-customer rules for non-resident Indians, Pandey said.
* Concurrently, the watchdog is reviewing the rules of the Innovators Growth Platform (IGP) for startups to help companies better access the markets for long-term capital.
* The platform was introduced in 2016 as the Institutional Trading Platform to help startups raise funds and list on stock exchanges, but stringent eligibility and lock-in rules limited interest.
* It was revived as the IGP in 2018, with further relaxations in 2019 and 2021 to encourage listings.
