BSE signs pact with IIT Alumni Council

To encourage listing of startups and also to develop a ‘high investor depth’ platform for such companies, Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) announced that they have signed a pact with IIT Alumni Council.

The exchange said that this alliance will ensure a complete end-to-end ecosystem for the proposed social stock exchange. Additionally, this will also allow for entity transparency, governance improvement and market discovery of share price, providing of liquidity for private equity (PE) investors as well as enable retail participation.

This newly-formed partnership will aid in revitalising the startup platform by attracting a wide range of venture capital and private equity funds to act as underwriters and market makers, who will be backed by BSE members in the front-end. Besides this, Category 1 merchant banks will be empanelled to help automate the listing process in order to reduce the time and cost of listing on the startup platform of the exchange.

Overall, it is expected that the listing time, as well as the complexity and cost for small and mid-sized enterprises (SMEs) and startups, will reduce by streamlining, automating and standardising the documentation processes. The exchange also added that it has always been in the forefront and supportive towards SMEs and startups getting listed on the exchange and raising capital as well as for creating a sustainable startup ecosystem.

In general, BSE states that any start-up company seeking a listing on BSE StartUps Platform should be in the sectors of IT, ITES, biotechnology or life science, 3D printing, space technology, e-commerce, hi-tech defence, drones, nano technologies, artificial intelligence, big data, etc.

To date, five companies have been listed on BSE Startups with a total market cap of Rs 82.71 crore and the total amount of money raised till now is Rs 19 crore.