Categories
Fin Tech

Transformation of the Indian Debt Market

Written by Sashi Kumar M C, Investment and Merchant Banker – Digilah (Thought Leadership)

Director at Solargise

The Balance of payment crisis in 1991, brought the liberalization of the Indian economy and with it came reforms of the financial system and capital markets. The thrust of these reforms was to promote a diversified, efficient, and competitive financial system, with the objective of improving the allocation of resources through operational flexibility, improved financial viability, and institutional strengthening.

The contagion effects of the 1997-98 Asian financial crisis further lent impetus to strengthen the domestic financial system. Reforms principally focused to: (i) Mitigate risks in the financial system; (ii) Efficiently allocate resources to the real sector; (iii) Make the financial system competitive globally; and (iv) Open the external sector.

India’s capital markets too were injected with reforms, specifically through the creation of various institutions such as the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) in 1992, an insurance market regulator (IRDAI) in 1999, and a pension market regulator (PFRDA) in 2003. National Stock Exchange NSE was incorporated in 1992. It was recognised as a stock exchange by SEBI in April 1993 and commenced operations in 1994 with the launch of the wholesale debt market.

These were a fall out of the report by L M Bhole, a professor of Economics at IIT-Bombay, who noted that “There are two major inadequacies which characterize our stock market. First, while the primary market is widespread, i.e., the new issues are distributed nation-wide, the secondary market is narrow, localized, fragmented, and imperfect. The stock exchanges do not have uniform settlement periods and dates; there is no national clearing system, and they are not integrated into a single unified national market system. Second, while a significant part of the primary market is in debentures, almost the whole of secondary market is in equities. In many developed countries, debt securities, especially long-term debt securities, account for a major part of the trading volume on stock exchanges.

Not just that, Indian bond markets had to fight its way into the very quagmire of corruption and kickbacks, Lack of Transparency plagued the market, as did in-efficient price discovery methods. Defaulted Bond holders raised fingers on credit rating agencies and they in turn raised questions on data sanity. One to one negotiations led to unethical means to place the bonds at unjustified premiums that led to a mismatch to traded market yields.

In contrast to equity markets, the bond markets have been held back by the more restrictive regulatory framework. Several reforms were introduced to the government bond market in 1992 when the price of newly introduced bonds was set by auction.

But it was not until 2005—11 years after the equity market—that bond market became an electronic order limit market. Adoption of Technology to achieve the set goals.

Over the past two decades, the Reserve Bank of India has adopted a strategy to create an efficient market infrastructure to enable safe trading, clearing and settlement. State-of-the-art primary issuance process with electronic bidding and straight-through-processing (STP) capabilities. An efficient and completely dematerialized depository system within the central bank. Delivery-versus-Payment (DVP) mode of settlement. Real Time Gross Settlement (RTGS). Electronic trading platform (Negotiated Dealing Systems – Order Matching) (NDS-OM) and a separate Central Counter Party (CCP) in the Clearing Corporation of India Ltd (CCIL) for guaranteed settlement.

Today, The Bond market activity has grown rapidly. Government securities market (G-Sec), corporate bond market and derivatives markets have become broad-based in terms of participation. Technology has given the ease and access to transact from anywhere, it has helped broad base not only investors but also products. Thus, driving the overall debt market size to a little over USD 2 Tn.

Government Bonds make majority of the market with sovereign yield curve spanning up to 40 years. Corporate Bonds are expected to double their growth to achieve Rs. 65-70 Lakh crore by 2025. Primary market issuances have increased resulting in large benchmark issuances. The volumes in secondary market have increased. The bid-ask spread of on-the-run securities continues to be low and so are the impact costs.  

With the increase in Fintech activities in this space, bond markets have spread their wings to reach all investors. So much so, that RBI now allows individuals under the Retail Direct Scheme, to buy Government Securities, SDLs, T-bills and Sovereign Gold Bonds.

Amidst all these positives brought about by the adoption of technology and digitalization, the regulators forget a key component – Human Resource.  Since 1992, a generation of Bond Market professionals have served a full cycle and retired.  A huge set of Bond traders and dealers, both in the primary and secondary market today face a different future……?

Categories
Digi Tech

Digi Tech

Leveraging Instagram for Your Small Business

Written By Shoni Duesling – Digilah (Thought Leadership)

Life Coach at https://www.instagram.com/twelveinchesaway/

With 1.3 billion users, Instagram is the second most popular social media platform behind Facebook, making it one of the most effective tools to help small businesses grow their brand. While its high number of users means that small businesses can reach more people, Instagram’s visual nature offers a great potential for building strong brand identity and brand loyalty.

How to leverage Instagram

So, how can you leverage Instagram for your small business?

Capitalise on the Visual

Potential clients will form an opinion on your business after just one look at your Instagram feed. That is why it is vital to communicate your brand identity as clearly as possible. To do this, you first need to get clear on your branding. Choosing a look and feel you want to communicate is the first step, after which you can choose a cohesive design consisting of your colour scheme, fonts, icons and/or images that align with your look and feel. Once you have done this, start posting! You can post tips, quotes, diagrams, photos, videos, basically any content that communicates clear and important messages to your community. A great way to build brand loyalty is by letting people know who is behind the brand; so, post photos or videos of you and your team. You can also use Instagram Stories (posts that disappear after 24 hours) to share announcements, tips, or behind-the-scenes snippets of what is happening in your business. Regardless of your strategy, create a cohesive look for your brand and capitalise on the visual.

Engage With Your Community

The more you engage with your community, the better. Engagement increases brand loyalty and it allows you to open up a two-way conversation so that you can better understand and serve your community. One means of engagement is to include a call to action in your feed posts. A call to action could be asking people to click the link in your bio, asking a question they can answer in the comments, or asking them to like, share or save the post. Another way to engage is to greet new followers. Take a moment to message each new follower. You are building a business, but you are also building a community with other human beings – take advantage of the opportunity to connect with them. Yet another way to engage is through the built-in engagement tools in Instagram stories. You can create polls, quizzes, or ask questions. Once you have posted a story, save it as a highlight so that it will permanently show on your feed for old and new visitors alike. Engaging with your community is one of the most enjoyable and beneficial things you can do for your small business.

Collaborate!

Reach more people with your business by collaborating with Instagram’s IG Live feature. This feature allows you to live stream for up to 4 hours either on your own or with other businesses, past clients, or whoever would be relevant to your community. One benefit of IG Live collaborations is that you get to engage with your community in real-time as they type in questions or answers to your questions. A second benefit is that you and the person you are collaborating with can share your expertise on your products and/or services in depth. Third, your sharing can build brand loyalty, as your community gets to know you and the person you are collaborating with through a longer video. Lastly, both you and the person you are collaborating with will likely gain new followers from each other’s communities.

At the end of the IG Live, you can share it in your stories and tag the person you collaborated with and (if you are the one who hosted the video) you can save it to your page for future viewers. So, think of one person you could collaborate with and reach out to them.

Over to You

So now it is over to you. Instagram is one of the best platforms to use for your small business. Through capitalising on the visual, engaging with your community, and collaborating with others, you will be on your way to establishing a clear brand and creating a community who will support your growing business for years to come.

Categories
Climate Tech

Climate Tech

GREEN-SHOPPING MAINSTREAM

Written by Deepak Subramanian – Digilah (Thought Leadership)

As COP26 comes to an end, there is an even bigger emphasis on sustainability within the business sector and we can expect more brand owners to jump on the ESG and sustainability bandwagon. At the same time, there is growing consciousness with consumers about climate change. All of us slowly begin to understand that the choices we make can have a lasting impact on the health of the planet. We are all increasingly being flooded with green offerings of some sort or the other. And more will come!!!! Consumers are indicating that they need help in solving some of the pain-points around shopping for green products.

They say “Don’t…

  • make me change my daily habits and make it inconvenient for me to use green products”
  • make it so hard for me to find green products”
  • make it so expensive for me to use green products”
  • make it so hard for me to identify which products are really green and which are not”
  • make it so technical that I don’t understand my impact when I make a green choice”

I believe that online shopping can be a big force to trigger the green shopping movement. There are many aspects of e-com that can address these pain-points in the moment of the shopping act

  • High quality first party data can help identify current and potential green shoppers.
  • Live streaming can help mobilize key local influencers to make green shopping trendy
  • Green labelling can help to better signal to shoppers which products are truly green.
  • Product pages can help educate on the performance and benefits of green products (vs regular offerings)
  • Gamification tools like coins can help measure the impact of a green cart vs a regular cart
  • The pricing algorithms can drive better repertoire purchase with cross-sell and upsell actions
  • The high reach of these platforms can drive scale economies to bring down green product costs.
  • The efficient fulfilment networks of these platforms will allow for brand owners to also avoid the fixed costs related to running a targeted go-to-market system

It’s no surprise that a big retailer like Amazon looks to address these friction points with the launch of the Amazon Climate Pledge.

Two major developments are needed to make online shopping for green products truly impactful.

  • Retailers will also need to play their part in designing and implementing more circular delivery systems which promote reuse and recycling of packing material (including options with less / better / no plastic). It does not help to deliver green products to the consumer homes with lot of virgin plastic and cardboard.
  • Brand owners and retailers must leverage industry bodies to establish independent and science-based certification systems that become the common currency in the industry. We must avoid the fight for ‘my certification VS your certification’ as this will erode consumer trust.

As with most big transformations, this requires strong leadership from the top of the organization. It also needs a different kind of leadership from the past. We need a mindset that prioritizes partnerships across the value-chain (suppliers, manufacturers, and retailers) with the common intention of solving the consumer friction points and to make shopping for sustainable products truly simple and easy.