Securities Exchange Board of India (SEBI) Chairperson Madhabi Puri Buch said on Friday the low-cost ₹250 systematic investment plan would be launched soon by mutual funds, aiding financial inclusion.

“More and more citizens are participating in the wealth creation of the nation. The AUM of mutual funds as a percentage of bank deposits had grown from just under 16 per cent to over 30 per cent in the past few years. We have about 11 and a half crore unique demand accounts and 5.3 crore unique mutual fund investors. So we are looking to see even further the penetration of mutual funds among the investor groups,” Buch said at a conference organised by NISM.

The SEBI chief said the domestic institutions had given tremendous resilience to Indian equities. “And that is one of the most attractive features of our markets for foreign investors as well, because they know that if and when they have to leave, the impact cost of leaving is very low, and the fact that, despite headwinds globally, the resilience of the Indian markets will continue to deliver returns to them because of the strong domestic demand,” Buch said.

Emerging Market Index

India’s weight in the MSCI Emerging Market Index has been steadily increasing, and is just under 20 per cent now. This means an automatic share of almost 20 per cent from global mutual funds and asset banks that invest in the emerging markets, she said.

Overall fundraising from capital markets, including through equity and debt instruments, is estimated to jump by nearly 21 per cent to ₹14.27 lakh crore in FY25 from the ₹11.8 lakh crore in FY24, Buch said.

Financial entities had mobilised ₹3.3 lakh crore in equity and ₹7.3 lakh crore from the debt markets, with the overall mop-up reaching ₹10.7 lakh crore in the last nine months of the fiscal.

Buch said money raised by real estate investments trusts, infrastructure investment trusts and municipal bonds contributed about ₹10,000 crore to the overall capital raising in the first nine months of FY25, but this was set to grow over the next decade.

The SEBI chief said ₹60 of every ₹100 that the banking system gave to corporates is through the bond market. “So the primary market for bonds in India is very, very strong, and there’s a huge amount of capital formation happening there. The reason we don’t see a lot of secondary market trading is because most of the investors are buy and hold investors,” she said.

A large number of AI driven projects are already underway within SEBI and one of the key utilizations of AI is to do faster processing of all applications, she added.