Southern States have a lot of potential in the capital market which needs to be explored, says SEBI Chairman

The southern States have a lot of potential to be explored in the capital markets, and it is important to bring in more MSMEs (Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises) into the public markets, SEBI (Securities and Exchange Board of India) Chairman Tuhin Kanta Pandey, said in a media interaction here on Monday. “Many of the good MSMEs, very robust MSMEs, are still not there in the capital markets. How do we create a more enabling environment in terms of their understanding, preparing them for the capital markets,” Pandey said. The SEBI chief was speaking to media on the sidelines of a closed door meeting with industry titans of Tamil Nadu, organised by the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII), where various topics were deliberated and feedback was gathered. As per Pandey, CII has proposed to work with its MSME centres to understand some of the key issues they face in tapping public markets, and will hand-hold them to do so. “To that extent whatever support SEBI’s ecosystem, exchanges, depositories and other players can provide, we will,” he said. LODR review With regard to SEBI’s efforts to undertake a comprehensive review of the Listing Obligations and Disclosure Requirements (LODR) to simplify regulations and improve ease of doing business, the Chairman said that the discussion brought forward various suggestions around these, especially around new -age companies. “We have started the process (of undertaking a review of listing regulations) and it will take around 4-6 months,” he said. Speaking about new-age technology IPOs and their valuations, he stressed that price discovery is left to the markets and investors, and not something the regulator steps in. We are trying to help investors make informed decisions by various ways, he added. This includes plans to bring out a summarised version of the offer documents to make it easier and simpler to understand. Education drive Among the various campaigns planned for investor education and awareness includes having separate multilingual YouTube channels to reach people across tier 2/3 cities and towns. “Communication should be in Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Marathi, Maharashtrian, all these languages, in order to reach out to a large segment of people,” he said With regard to businessline’s query on spends from SEBI’s Investor Protection and Education Fund (IPEF) stagnated at around 1-2 per cent of the total fund size, Pandey said that spends from SEBI’s IPEF remain low because similar purpose funds are also available with other bodies like exchanges, repositories and MFIs. “In the (investor awareness) campaigns which we are now going forward in a big way, next two years there will be lots of such campaigns and in that, both SEBI funds and other funds will be used,” he said. Published on December 1, 2025