Making The Start-Up Life Easier: SEBI Rolls Out Changes To Help Raise Money From Capital Markets

India’s apex securities market regulator, SEBI (Securities and Exchange Board of India), has amended capital listing norms to help startups working in certain sectors, to raise money from capital markets, The New Indian Express has reported. The amended regulations will apply to all startup’s e-commerce, data analytics, biotechnology and nanotechnology sectors.

Among the new changes that SEBI announced after a board meeting, Institutional Trading Platform’ (ITP) will be renamed to Innovators Growth Platform. The platform, launched in 2013, failed to promote listing of startups, due to extensive regulatory requirements.

While the regulator altogether removed the requirement that investors should hold at least 25 per cent of the post issue capital, it reduced the minimum application size for share offers from Rs ten lakh to Rs two lakh.

“Since June-July, we had detail discussions with tech companies from Bangalore, and this also went to Primary Market Advisory Committee (PMAC), and we have tried to build various features, and we hope that it will be used for listing and also exits,” said Ajay Tyagi, Chairman of SEBI.

However, to prevent the abuse of such liberal norms, Mr Tyagi cautioned, “We will come out with a circular soon which would have adequate safeguards built-in to ensure that this facility is not misused.”

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