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1. STRATEGIC CONTEXT: BRIDGING THE GAPS
The Indian corporate debt market, though sizeable in terms of outstanding issuances, has for decades suffered from structural and behavioural constraints that have hindered its growth potential. Retail investor participation has remained persistently low, with the secondary market dominated by institutional investors such as banks, mutual funds, and insurance companies. Trading activity has largely been concentrated in a limited set of highly rated issuances, while vast sections of the bond universe have remained illiquid. Moreover, price discovery has historically been opaque, with real-time transactional information accessible primarily to wholesale participants. This combination of limited transparency, inadequate retail access, and liquidity fragmentation created a market that, while functionally viable for institutions, was effectively exclusionary for smaller investors and lacked depth in the broader sense.
Historically, the Indian bond market evolved in two distinct phases.
THE WHOLESALE DEBT MARKET
The Wholesale Debt Market (WDM) segment of the NSE and BSE is the institutional nucleus of India’s debt market, created in the mid-1990s to provide a transparent, regulated platform for large-value transactions in fixed-in
