Mumbai, Mar 1: The unique registered investors on the National Stock Exchange (NSE) of India crossed 9 crore (90 million) on February 29, 2024. The total number of client codes registered with the NSE stands at 16.9 crores (169 million).

Unique investor registrations at NSE have seen an accelerating trend over the last few years. While the increase from 6 to 7 crore (60 to 70 million) unique investors took about nine months, the next crore (10 million) investors came in eight months, and the jump from 8 to 9 crore (80 to 90 million) took only five months. During this period, daily new unique registrations have averaged between nearly 47,000 in October 2023 to 78,000 in January this year. The investor base has seen more than 3x jump in the last five years, facilitated by rapid growth in digitization, rising investor awareness, financial inclusion, and strong market performance.

From the beginning of FY24 up to February 29, 2024, the Nifty 50 returned 27%, while Nifty 500 delivered 38% return over the same period. Annualised return over the last five-year period ending February 2024 stood at 15.3% and 17.5% for Nifty 50 and Nifty 500 respectively.

Of the new investors that have entered the market since October 2023, nearly 42% hailed from North India, followed by West India (28%), South India (17%) and East India (13%). Uttar Pradesh and Maharashtra contributed the largest number of new investors during this period, together accounting for more than a quarter of all new additions. Currently, the highest number of unique registered investors are from Maharashtra with 1.6 crore (16 million) investors, followed by Uttar Pradesh with 97 lakh (9.7 million) investors and Gujarat with 81 lakh (8.1 million).

This increase in new investors has come across states, with all but 33 pin codes having at least one individual directly investing in the market. Over 46% of all new investor registrations in the last five months originated from districts beyond the top 100 districts (by number of new registrations in the period). Indirect participation has also increased meaningfully during this period, as evidenced by almost 1.6 crore (16 million) new SIP accounts opened between Oct’23 to Jan’24, and average monthly SIP inflows of ~Rs 17,600 crores (176 billion) vs. Rs 15,115 crore (151 billion) in the previous six-month period.

Sriram Krishnan, Chief Business Development Officer, NSE said: “It is encouraging to see that the latest 1 crore new investors have been onboarded on the exchange in the shortest time of five months. Deepening participation in various exchange traded financial instruments such as equities, exchange-traded funds (ETFs), REITs, InvITs, Government Bonds, Corporate Bonds, etc. can be attributed to some of the key drivers such as simplification of KYC process over the years, financial literacy imparted by all stakeholders through investor awareness programs and sustained positive market sentiment over the long term.”

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