REC Raises ₹500 Crore Through India’s First Tokenised Corporate Bond Pilot

State-owned financing company REC Ltd. has completed what it described as India’s first pilot issuance of tokenised corporate bonds under the Securities and Exchange Board of India’s (SEBI) Regulatory Sandbox Framework.

The company raised around ₹500 crore through the pilot, marking a step towards testing the use of distributed ledger technology in India’s corporate debt market.

The issue had an initial base size of about ₹100 crore, along with a greenshoe option of roughly ₹400 crore. Bidding was conducted through the Electronic Bidding Platform of the National Stock Exchange (NSE).

Issue Draws Strong Investor Demand

REC received bids worth around ₹796 crore for the bond issue, nearly eight times the base issue size. The company eventually accepted bids aggregating around ₹500 crore.

The bonds carry a coupon rate of 7.30% per annum and have a tenure of one year and nine months.

One of the notable aspects of the pilot was the speed of settlement. Pay-in, allotment and listing were completed on the same day. The bonds have subsequently been listed on both the NSE and the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE).

How The Tokenised Bond Pilot Worked

The pilot was carried out with the participation of SEBI, the Reserve Bank of India and several market infrastructure institutions. These included National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), depositories and stock exchanges.

The transaction introduced atomic delivery-versus-payment settlement, under which the transfer of securities and payment can happen together as part of the same process.

REC said the system uses Demat 2.0, under which ownership of securities is recorded and tracked on a permissioned distributed ledger. The framework is intended to improve transparency and reduce some of the operational delays involved in settlement while operating within existing regulatory safeguards.

REC’s Recent Financial Performance

REC reported a net profit of ₹4,192.7 crore for the first quarter of FY27, compared with ₹4,465 crore in the corresponding quarter a year earlier. Its net interest income declined 4% to ₹5,453 crore. The company also declared a first interim dividend of ₹4.25 per equity share for FY27.

On Monday, 7 September 2026, REC shares ended at ₹316.50 on the BSE, down ₹3, or 0.94%, for the day.

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