What Is SEBI? India's Stock Market Regulator Explained
SEBI stands for the Securities and Exchange Board of India. It is the statutory body that regulates India's securities markets — the NSE and BSE exchanges, stockbrokers, mutual funds, and every listed company. Set up in 1988 and given statutory powers in 1992, its job is to protect investors and keep the markets fair and transparent.
What SEBI actually does
- Registers and supervises brokers, mutual funds, and other market intermediaries.
- Writes the disclosure rules listed companies must follow — quarterly results, shareholding patterns, and corporate actions.
- Runs the insider-trading (PIT) disclosure regime that requires promoters and insiders to report their trades.
- Approves IPO prospectuses (the DRHP/RHP) and polices market manipulation.
Why it matters to you
Almost every reliable Indian market dataset exists because SEBI mandates it. The standardised quarterly XBRL filings, the quarterly shareholding breakdown into promoter, FII, DII and public, and the insider-trade disclosures are all SEBI requirements — which is exactly why they can be served as clean, comparable data.
SEBI in the data
BharatStock's shareholding, insider-trade, and financials feeds are built directly on SEBI-mandated exchange filings — the regulator sets the format, we turn it into an API.