Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI), the regulator of the markets, has been trying to get its Innovators Growth Platform to get running. It is expected to come out with the latest draft required for the platform. This has been hyped as India’s answer to global tech powerhouses such as Nasdaq.
IGP has been under work for several years now. It was previously known as Institutional Trading Platform. They renamed it last year which has found new takers to date, with the venture capital ecosystem and Indian startup asking for several recommendations to be included in the latest draft of the IGP. Two of the main suggestions include making the delisting norms easier which would help to facilitate more potential mergers and acquisitions & exits. The other being having Indian family offices out of which some are largely structured as trusts to be added to the list of accredited investors which currently only have a body corporate and individuals.
Most family offices have been structured as trusts in India. The value of family offices currently sits around $2.1 trillion of assets. Most of it is currently in listed markets, but they are now slowly but steadily coming over to invest in other alternative assets and startups.
The Institutional Trading Platform was introduced by SEBI in 2015. They brought radical changes to the ITP and renamed it as the Innovators Growth Platform (IGP) in December 2019. It is a trading platform set by SEBI for startups and new-age technologies. The reconstruction came after the ITP had failed to gain attraction.
IGP has been hyped as India’s answer to Nasdaq. SEBI had recognized the need for startups having an exclusive platform. The comparison emerged with that of Nasdaq in the US, which boasts new age technology companies such as Facebook, Google, Amazon, Netflix, and the likes. The objective was initially to ensure a separate dedicated platform be provided for new-age technology companies including start-ups like intellectual property, technology, data analytics, biotech or nanotech. The major changes were regarding the eligibility criteria for companies to list on the platform, allocation criteria to investors, trading lot and migration to the Main Board, minimum application size, and a number of allottees.
