March 17, 2013

Press Release No. 1

Mumbai Investothon sees overwhelming participation

Mumbaikars were out in large numbers on Sunday morning, to express solidarity with Indian investors, at the third Investothon in Mumbai, on the 17^th of March. India’s biggest investor movement, the Investothon was started by the National Stock Exchange (NSE) and the CNBC TV18 Group in March 2011, from Mumbai. Since then, the Investothon has travelled to many parts of the country, including tier two cities such as Rajkot, Kochi and Indore, garnering more support each time. Nearly 40,000 market participants have participated, in the different investor runs all over the country, since 2011.

The Investothon at Mumbai was organized at the MMRDA Ground at the Bandra Kurla Complex and was flagged off by Ms. Chitra Ramkrishna, Joint Managing Director, NSE, Mr. S. Ramann, Executive Director, SEBI, Mr. Shankar Raman, CFO and Executive Director, Larsen & Toubro, Mr. R.K. Goyal, Executive Director at Central Bank of India, Mr. Ashutosh Khajuria, President , Treasury, Federal Bank, Mr. Senthil Chengalvarayan, President & Editorial Director, TV 18 Business Media and Mr. Anil Uniyal, CEO, CNBC TV18 & CNBC Awaaz. The investor run was attended by more than 8000 people, including top bankers, dealers, brokerage firms, investors, corporates, SEBI officials, investor associations and a large number of NSE officials.

One of the races was a five kilometer run, named on the government’s new scheme, the Rajiv Gandhi equity savings scheme (RGESS), which provides tax benefits to investors, for investing in certain permitted securities and products. The second run was a three kilometer run, called the Power run. Prizes were given for the most enthusiastic team, the highest number of shareholders and for the high fives team.

In the recent budget, the government of India, had made some changes in the RGESS scheme, to make it more attractive for first time investors and NSE has been proactively taking many initiatives to popularize the scheme. Anyone who earns within 12 lakh and has not invested directly in stocks or derivatives can invest 50,000 rupees and get tax benefit on half that amount. This benefit has also been extended to three financial years instead of one year ,and the top 100 traded stocks on NSE, stocks of Maharatnas and Navratnas and some equity ETT’s like Nifty ETF’s and Mini Nifty ETF’s are eligible securities, to invest through this scheme.

Joint Managing Director of NSE, Ms. Chitra Ramkrishna said, “We have been intensively engaging with Corporate and government employees, to explain the tax benefits of the Rajiv Gandhi scheme and the response has been very encouraging. I hope in the coming years, this will encourage new investors to come to the markets and grow their investments.”

Anil Uniyal, CEO, CNBC TV18 & CNBC Awaaz said, “Investothon 2012-13 is an attempt to help the nation progress from a mere savings economy to an investment hub, making it a unique and the largest support system for the country. The aim of this initiative is to educate investors and market participants about India’s investment potential.”

The National Stock exchange has been continuously engaged in efforts to empower investors, through different initiatives. Since October last year, the exchange has been sending SMS and E mail alerts, every day to lakh of investors, so that they can independently verify the transactions they have done, in the course of the trading day. So every day, more than 2, 76,000 SMS’s and nearly 2, 15,000 email alerts are being sent to investors. To avail of this facility, an investor only needs to register his or her cell number and email, on the NSE website.

To help investors to take the right investing decisions, NSE is sponsoring research of companies, which are not tracked by analysts. Research reports, which give details of a company’s business fundamentals and corporate governance standards are available on the NSE website, for more than 1600 listed companies and are updated every quarter.

NSE is also in the process of finalizing plans to launch a dedicated platform for debt, which will give retail investors the opportunity to invest in fixed income securities on a transparent exchange platform, apart from the OTC market already available for it.

In another recent initiative, NSE has launched a website called the NSE Angel Guide, to encourage people from affluent families, to use their skills and knowledge , to financially empower people from the under privileged sections. NSE has provided a dialogue guide, in English and Hindi on the website, www.nseangelguide.com, which can be downloaded and used, to impart skills to domestic help, drivers or guards in the community. In turn, NSE, through an NGO, will plant a tree in the name of the person, who completes this exercise.

The Investothon is expected to travel to other tier two cities in South India and even smaller towns, in the coming years.