Nearly three decades after dematerialisation reshaped India’s securities market, it is preparing for another infrastructure upgrade. Through ‘Demat 2.0’, a pilot programme launched by the Securities and Exchange Board of India (‘SEBI’) and the Reserve Bank of India (‘RBI’) at the Global Fintech Fest 2026, corporate bonds can now be issued, held and settled as tokenised instruments on a Distributed Ledger Technology (‘DLT’) infrastructure. The pilot promises same day settlement, automated corporate actions and lower operational friction. [...]