Sebi to ease startup listing norms

New Delhi, Dec. 9: In a major push to kickstart listing of start- ups in India in a big way, capital markets regulator Sebi has lined up a slew of relaxations for new- age ventures in sectors like e- commerce, data analytics and bio- technology to raise funds and get their shares traded on stock exchanges.

The proposed changes, likely to be discussed at Sebi’s board meeting this week, also include renaming the ‘ Institutional Trading Platform’ that the regulator had created for such listings as ‘ Innovators Growth Platform’.

The relaxation in the norms follows tepid market interest to the existing platform and demands from various stakeholders to make the norms easier and the platform more accessible in the wake of expanding activities in the Indian start- up space.

While there has been a growing interest among the start- ups to get listed, their intention has failed to convert into actual listing in a big way and many of them have cited difficulties in meeting the compliance requirements.

Sebi is also planning to expand its Offer For Sale framework to more companies, relax its norms for clubbing of investment limits by established foreign investors and tighten insider trading rules.

The regulator is also planning to relax its disclosure norms for housing finance companies and NBFCs regarding pledged shares of listed firms and also provide for cancellation of an OFS in case of limited interest from nonretail shareholders on the first day itself, officials said.