New Delhi: India’s capital markets are no longer merely supporting economic growth but are actively shaping its quality, resilience and inclusiveness, Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) chairman Tuhin Kanta Pandey said on Thursday, underlining a decisive shift away from a bank-dominated financing model.
Speaking at Samvad 2026, SEBI’s annual securities market symposium, Pandey said equity and debt markets have together facilitated average annual issuances of about ₹9.6 lakh crore over the past decade, channeling capital into infrastructure, manufacturing, renewable energy, startups and MSMEs.
Between April and December FY26, companies raised over ₹3.8 trillion through equity, while corporate bond issuances touched nearly ₹6.8 trillion in the first nine months of the year. India also witnessed record IPO activity for the second consecutive year, with 311 IPOs in the first nine months of FY26, following 320 issues in FY25.
Pandey noted a structural change in corporate financing patterns. Outstanding corporate bonds, which were about 43% of bank credit to industry and services a decade ago, have risen to nearly ₹56 trillion, close to 60% of bank credit to these sectors, helping reduce concentration risk in the financial system.
Reflecting this deepening, India’s market capitalisation-to-GDP ratio has climbed from around 69% in FY16 to nearly 140% by December 2025, indicating tighter integration between capital markets and national wealth creation.
The expansion has also been social and demographic. India now has 13.9 crore unique investors, compared with 3.8 crore in March 2019, with nearly 69% of investors below the age of 40, Pandey said. Mutual fund assets under management have grown from ₹12 trillion in FY16 to nearly ₹80 trillion, while average monthly SIP inflows in FY26 so far have reached ₹28,500 crore, more than three times FY19 levels.
SEBI’s regulatory approach, Pandey said, is aimed at balancing growth with protection. Measures include streamlining IPO processes, simplifying related-party transaction disclosures, enabling single filings for listed companies and reviewing key regulations such as LODR to remove redundancies.
On the debt side, SEBI has lowered thresholds under electronic book mechanisms, expanded access to REITs and InvITs, and reduced minimum investment sizes to encourage retail participation. Steps are also underway to simplify onboarding for foreign portfolio investors and NRIs through digital and unified registration frameworks.
As participation widens, investor protection and governance remain central, Pandey said, pointing to initiatives such as validated UPI handles, the Unified Investor App, enhanced disclosure norms and stricter accountability for intermediaries.
“Capital markets are collective institutions. Their credibility is shaped daily by the conduct of every participant,” he said, adding that sustained capital formation will depend as much on trust and transparency as on scale and innovation