Blog Posts
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Financial Regulation in the Age of AI: India’s Balancing Act
[Shuchi Agrawal is a financial regulatory lawyer and researcher] In the last decade, India has emerged as a pioneer in digital public infrastructure (“DPI”) platforms. The country has made substantial technological advances through Aadhaar, Unified Payments Interface (“UPI”) and DigiLocker. Through these innovations, India has leveraged technology for social and financial development. This has also had the effect
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Rethinking Retail Participation: SEBI’s Proposal to Permit Incentives in Public Debt Offerings
[Sharnam Agarwal and Siddhant Samaiya are 3rd year students at National Law Institute University, Bhopal] Last month, the board of the Securities and Exchange Board of India (“SEBI”) approved a proposed amendment relating to public debt offerings, following its October 2025 consultation paper. The amendment permits issuers to provide higher coupons or issue-price discounts to specific investor classes, including senior citizens, women, armed forces
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The Bankers Are Coming: RBI’s Architecture for Bank-Financed Takeovers
[Rudraksh Misra is a 3rd Year B.A.LL.B. (Hons.) Student at Hidayatullah National Law University, Raipur] In October 2025, the Reserve Bank of India (‘RBI’) issued the draft RBI (Commercial Banks – Capital Market Exposure) Directions, 2025 (‘RBI Draft Directions’) proposing to allow banks to finance corporate takeovers, a marked departure from decades of regulations that effectively barred banks from funding such acquisitions.
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Debtors Without Borders: Navigating India’s IBC 2016 and Foreign Lending
[Varsha S. Banta is an India-qualified lawyer, and Senior Resident Fellow (Corporate Law & Financial Regulation) at the Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy, New Delhi] On August 12, 2025, close to a decade after the enactment of the Indian Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code, 2016 (IBC), the Government of India (GoI) introduced the largest set of amendments through the Insolvency and
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Cryptocurrency as Property: Madras High Court’s Ruling and the Indian Regulatory Framework
[Ashwasti Shravani is a 4th year B.B.A., LL.B. (Hons.) student at the National Law University Odisha)] On 25 October 2025, the Madras High Court delivered a landmark judgment in Rhutikumari v. Zanmai Labs Pvt. Ltdclassifying cryptocurrency as “property” under Indian law, giving legal recognition to investors’ ownership rights and establishing that crypto exchanges function as fiduciaries holding digital
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Equality By Design: SEBI’s Latest Blueprint for AIF Investor Rights
[Kritika Jain and Niharika Singh are 4th Year B.B.A. LL.B. (Hons.) and B.A. LL.B. (Hons.) students, respectively, at Gujarat National Law University, Gandhinagar] On November 7, 2025, the Securities and Exchange Board of India (‘SEBI’) released a draft circular (the ‘Draft Circular’) seeking public comments on operational clarifications to pro-rata and pari-passu investor rights for Alternative Investment Funds (‘AIFs’). Through this,
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Unsettling the Settled: The Nature of Dividend Distribution Tax in India
[Paras Khetan is a 5th year BA.LLB (Hons.) student at the National Law School of India University, Bangalore] Dividend taxation in India has undergone significant changes over the past few decades. For a substantial duration, India followed a unique system for taxing the dividends declared or paid by a domestic company called the ‘Dividend Distribution Tax’
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Unlocking Capital: SEBI’s Proposal to Ease Lock-in Norms for Pre-IPO Investors
[Khushi Patel is a 4th year BBA LLB student at Gujarat National Law University, Gandhinagar] India’s IPO pipeline continues to surge, driven not only by resilient market sentiment but also by the growing prevalence of pre-IPO placements and secondary exits by early-stage investors seeking to crystallize gains ahead of listing. In 2025 alone, nine of the 86 companies
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Uncovering Significant Beneficial Owners Through Publicly Available Information
[Pammy Jaiswal is a Partner and Darshan Rao is an Executive, both at Vinod Kothari and Company] The framework for significant beneficial owner (“SBO”) identification can be traced back to the recommendations of the Financial Action Task Force (“FATF”). Section 90 of the Companies Act, 2013 (“Act”) read with the Companies (Significant Beneficial Owners) Rules, 2018 (“SBO Rules”) translates the
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Demat and Pre-2019 Transfers: Implications of SEBI’s Proposed for Listed Companies
[Gungun Sharma and Vibhor Maloo are 4th year B.A. LL.B. (Hons.) students at Hidayatullah National Law University, Raipur] On October 17, 2025, Securities and Exchange Board of India (“SEBI”) issued a consultation paper proposing amendments to the SEBI (Listing Obligations and Disclosure Requirements) Regulations, 2015 (“LODR Regulations”) to resolve a long-standing issue of transfer of shares executed in physical form before
