India is preparing its first tokenized corporate bond issue, with state-owned power financier REC expected to sell notes worth less than 5 billion rupees ($57 million) next month. The limited pilot would settle purchases in India’s wholesale central bank digital currency and require investors to hold both a bank-provided wholesale CBDC wallet and a new distributed-ledger securities wallet known as DEMAT 2.0. Access would initially be restricted to a select group of investors, with a three-month lock-in and an expected secondary market by December outside the conventional electronic book provider platform. The structure builds on the RBI’s wholesale CBDC programme launched in 2022 and later extended to money-market instruments and CBDC-linked deposits, linking central-bank settlement rails with SEBI’s corporate-bond issuance track. Regulators have framed tokenized government securities and corporate bonds as distinct from private cryptocurrencies. SEBI Chairman Tuhin Kanta Pandey had earlier outlined a six-to-nine-month pilot window from late May, while India’s corporate bond market stands near 59 lakh crore rupees with limited secondary trading.