India launches corporate bond tokenization pilot, three companies raise $1.07 billion in funding

The Securities and Exchange Commission of India and the Reserve Bank of India have launched the Demat 2.0 pilot, introducing the issuance and settlement of corporate bonds into a distributed ledger, with the goal of covering the $620 billion corporate bond market. REC, Larsen&Toubro, and IIFL Finance raised INR 102.5 billion, approximately USD 1.07 billion, through this system. REC issued India's first tokenized corporate bond on September 7th, raising INR 50 billion. The system achieves synchronous delivery of bonds and funds through a unified market interface, and uses smart contracts to process interest payments and principal redemptions.