January 18, 2014

Press Release No. 1

NSE Organizes Investor Week to Spread Awareness, Empower Market Participants

· Engages extensively with corporates, M.S. University, the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India and member brokers to spread awareness on financial market

· Disseminates information on basic principles of investing and elementary economics to teachers and students of municipal schools in the city

· To organize Investothon, a run for investor awareness on Sunday to encourage member brokers and dealers to build a healthy financial market by promoting the right values in investing

· The Investothon has been organised earlier at Ahmedabad and Rajkot

January 18, VADODARA: India’s leading bourse the National Stock Exchange (NSE) organized

Intensive awareness programs this week in Vadodara as a part of its initiative to help citizens in Gujarat’s third-largest city learn the basics of capital market, financial planning and safe investing. The initiative will conclude with an investor run or “Investothon” on Sunday.

Since inception, NSE has rigorously promoted investor awareness in different Indian cities to empower people with information on market products, benefits of investing and how to invest safely. The focus, this time, is on Vadodara, a fast-growing industrial and trading hub with a large investor base. The city is home to large public sector chemical and fertilizer companies, private sector manufacturing companies, pharmaceutical companies and numerous small and medium enterprises providing employment to a highly skilled workforce from all over the country.

Senior members from the exchange held intensive engagement programmes with leading corporates, the Faculty of Management at Maharaja Sayajirao University, which is ranked as one of India’s leading Universities, the local chapter of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India, Rotary club, member brokers, non-government organizations and students of local schools. The aim was to educate market participants on their rights and obligations in the market, the importance of investing according to an investor’s risk appetite and to spread awareness on products like exchange traded funds.

The sessions educated market participants on various products including Nifty Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs), in which an investor can buy one unit in just a little over Rs. 600 (depending on the current value of the index). These funds can be traded just like stocks; their NAV is available real time and have given good returns in the long term.

NSE officials also educated M.S. University (earlier called the Baroda University) students on topics like inflation, risk, investment versus savings, securities market and the different asset classes in the exchange market. Reaching out to students and teachers from schools in the city was also a part of the initiative where the focus was on empowering them with knowledge on investments, savings, inflation and risk. Students in schools associated with the Mahavir International - Mahavir Foundation Trust were also distributed dictionaries.

Since 1994, when NSE was set up, investor protection has been given the highest importance. In keeping with this line of thinking, NSE currently runs 11 Investor service centres in India, including one in Ahmedabad, for grievance redressal and handling arbitration cases on investor complaints.

Addressing the media, Mr. Ravi Varanasi, Chief Business Development, NSE, said, “NSE has been conducting investor initiatives all over the country for investors, market participants and school and college students to grow the investor base and instill financial discipline in youth. Investor initiatives at Vadodara are aimed at encouraging the enterprising people of the city to invest in productive assets to manage their money wisely.”

Mr. Varanasi will flag off Vadodara’s first ever Investothon being organized on Sunday. Investothon is a run organized to bring the investing community together and encourage them to promote best practices in investing and build a healthy financial market. Twenty four investor runs have been organized in the country so far in the last three years and more than 30,000 people have participated in them.

The runs have been held in the metros and several tier two and tier three cities like Pune, Indore, Bhubaneshwar, Rajkot and Kochi.