India. The Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE), founded 1875, is Asia's oldest exchange and lists more companies than any exchange in the world, over 5,000 of them. The National Stock Exchange (NSE) began trading in 1994 as a fully electronic, order-driven market. It was born directly out of the 1992 Harshad Mehta securities scandal, which exposed how rotten the old broker-club, paper-certificate system was. The same reform wave created the SEBI Act (1992) and dematerialised shareholding (Depositories Act, 1996).
The result is a paradox worth savouring. India's market plumbing is among the most modern anywhere. It is electronic and demat throughout, and it settles T+1, because it was rebuilt from scratch after a scandal.
Nearly every large Indian company is listed on both NSE and BSE, so each stock has two order books. Arbitrageurs keep the two prices within paise of each other. In practice NSE dominates trading, roughly 92–94% of cash-equity volume (as of mid-2026, check on SEBI's monthly bulletin). NSE's flagship index is the Nifty 50, and BSE's is the Sensex. Both exchanges also run SME boards (NSE Emerge, BSE SME) for small companies, and India's international exchange at GIFT City now hosts GIFT Nifty, the offshore Nifty futures that migrated from Singapore in 2023.
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How do NYSE and Nasdaq work?
United States. The New York Stock Exchange (NYSE), tracing to the 1792 Buttonwood Agreement, runs a hybrid model: an electronic book plus human Designated Market Makers (DMMs) obligated to maintain orderly trading in their assigned stocks, most visibly at the opening and closing auctions. Nasdaq launched in 1971 as the world's first electronic market. It was historically a dealer network of competing market makers and is now an electronic order book with a technology-company tilt (Apple, Microsoft, Nvidia, Alphabet, Amazon all list there).
Remember one structural difference. A US company lists on one exchange, but its shares trade on sixteen-plus exchanges and dozens of off-exchange venues, such as wholesale market makers and dark pools. Regulation stitches them together. Reg NMS requires trades at or inside the National Best Bid and Offer (NBBO). Around 40–45% of US volume executes off-exchange (as of mid-2026, check on FINRA/Cboe data). India is the opposite. Trading is concentrated on the two exchanges themselves, and there is no wholesaler system routing retail orders off-exchange. Your order goes to the exchange's book.
NSE vs BSE vs NYSE vs Nasdaq at a glance
| NSE | BSE | NYSE | Nasdaq | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Founded / trading since | 1992 / 1994 | 1875 | 1792 | 1971 |
| Model | Electronic order book | Electronic order book (BOLT) | Hybrid: electronic + DMM auctions | Electronic; competing market makers |
| Flagship index | Nifty 50 | Sensex (30) | — (S&P 500 tracks large caps across both US venues) | Nasdaq-100 |
| Listed companies | ~2,500 | ~5,000+ | ~2,300 | ~3,300 |
| Regular hours (local) | 09:15–15:30 | 09:15–15:30 | 09:30–16:00 | 09:30–16:00 |
| Open price | Pre-open call auction 09:00–09:08 | Same | Opening auction (DMM) | Opening cross |
| Close price | VWAP of last 30 min (15:00–15:30) | Same | Closing auction — the day's biggest liquidity event | Closing cross |
| Total market cap of listed universe | ~$4.5–5 trillion (India total; as of mid-2026) | (same universe, dual-listed) | ~$55–60 trillion (US total; as of mid-2026) | (included in US total) |
Counts and market caps move, so treat the table's figures as order-of-magnitude and verify on the exchanges' own statistics pages. Two closing-price mechanics deserve a note. The US close is a single giant auction print, and index funds transact there, so it is the deepest moment of the US day. India's close is a computed volume-weighted average price of the final half hour. SEBI has been consulting on moving to a closing auction, so check the current rule. Note the mechanical India/US bridge too. Several Indian companies also trade in the US as ADRs (Infosys, ICICI Bank, HDFC Bank, Wipro, Dr. Reddy's on NYSE, MakeMyTrip on Nasdaq), so you will later see them file SEC Form 20-F.