Tuesday, September 30
Banking Hall, London
India’s Booming Markets Call for New Trading Infrastructure
It’s a busy time for TT in India. Next week, we’re sponsoring the Arjun Global GIFT City Financial Markets & Technology Forum, and then we’ll be in Mumbai at FOW Trading India. This comes as we work on opening our new office in the vibrant GIFT City fintech hub, where we will drive product innovation and development for our clients worldwide—while also providing local, personalized support to our rapidly growing customer base here in GIFT City.
As we gear up for these events, I want to share my thoughts on why India is such an important country for TT today, and how we’re developing our business offering in the region.
India as a Financial Markets Hotspot
India enthusiasm is spreading across financial markets, and for good reason. At a macro level, India is the world’s fastest growing major economy, with GDP projections of 6.7% per annum for 2025-2026. This is well above the 2.7% expectation for global GDP.
The boom in the listed derivatives market is also notable. Futures and options activity on Indian exchanges accounted for two-thirds of 2024’s global trading volume. The drivers of this activity are multiple, but some characteristics stand out.
Firstly, India’s derivatives market is globally unique in proportion, dwarfing its cash equity market by as much as 10 times in size. These markets have also become famous due to their high levels of retail participation, especially in index options. A recent case highlighted how liquidity disparity allowed a sophisticated trading firm to influence the underlying index with relatively small trades in cash equity, leading to massive gains in the more active derivatives market.
India’s cash equity segment is growing, but it needs deeper liquidity. This trend is set to be a secular one, underpinned by demographics. India has a young and tech-savvy population that has great familiarity with mobile trading platforms. A growing and well-regulated economy will continue to see a high rate of participation from foreign institutional investors (FII) as well. Combined with government and industry initiatives to financialize domestic savings, this is a strong motor for capital markets activity.
This vibrancy and positive momentum have drawn most of the world’s top market makers, including Citadel Securities, IMC Trading, Millennium and Optiver, to participate.
Regulation Amid Rapid Development
In such a rapidly developing space, gauging how the market regulator acts is a crucial part of participation. As in the U.S., the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) has a dual mandate to protect investors and promote market development. As is the case in any market, balancing these two responsibilities is a challenge and can create differences with participants.
A strong regulatory trend this year has been SEBI’s release of a raft of new regulations in quick succession. Some might prefer a more gradual approach, with more time between new rules being released. However, the pace at which India’s markets are growing does call for a proactive approach, and I think SEBI has broadly struck the right balance in pursuing its mandate.
TT’s Role In a Growing India
India and the Middle East combined are one of the fastest-growing markets at TT. While we have already established a solid footprint in India, plans are underway to significantly expand our presence beyond the current scope. While the initial impetus to create a presence in India was to establish a development center to serve APAC clients, our scope of work is expanding as we grow to develop onshore business in India. Our team has already grown beyond developing and testing software, as we are actively building out product, sales, operations, finance, legal and marketing functions.
With the historic focus on product and service development for our broader global customer base, we don’t yet have a large domestic business or connections to native Indian exchanges. Having said that, we are already working on establishing connectivity with the National Stock Exchange of India (NSE), with plans to expand to the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE), the Multi Commodity Exchange of India (MCX) and GIFT City exchanges in due course.
Once established, India market access will be available to many of our existing clients. This benefits Indian markets too, with the introduction of high-quality liquidity provided by the firms that we serve.
Alongside building out market access, we also aim to build an offering for domestic firms and their nuanced needs. As we hire for new roles in India, we are moving to bring TT’s multi-asset trading platform here in the coming months and years.
The TT Offering
TT is a unique platform in capital markets. The legacy products of many of our competitors still result in multiple deployments, procurement of multiple products, and the potential for large implementation fees for those wanting to trade different asset classes or manage a front-to-back trade life cycle.
Meanwhile, our integrated SaaS platform, rather than just a collection of disparate products, delivers a superior client experience, simplifying the onboarding and usage of products and services.
In addition, our well-established position in derivatives has created strong relationships with exchanges, banks, brokers and buy-side firms. This further supports the strength of our platform.
India is one of the fastest-growing major economies in the world, and we want to grow with it. With listed derivatives and cash equity markets forming a key chapter in this growth story, traders will soon need the platforms and infrastructure that are well-established in the U.S. and European markets. This applies as much to non-Indian firms seeking to access the market as it does to Indian firms wanting to enhance their performance. With an already established Indian base of operations and now our new GIFT City presence, TT is ready to support this transition.
To find out more about the TT offering and our plans for India, get in touch by completing our online inquiry form.