SEBI (Securities and Exchange Board of India) was established in 1988 and got statutory teeth via the SEBI Act 1992. It regulates India's securities markets end to end. It protects investors and develops the market, and it regulates the intermediaries. It also writes and enforces the rulebooks you'll be citing for years:
- ICDR Regulations, which govern how securities are issued (see the IPO machinery).
- LODR Regulations (Listing Obligations & Disclosure Requirements), the continuous-disclosure contract every listed company signs. It requires quarterly results within 45 days, audited annual results within 60 days of year-end and the quarterly shareholding pattern within 21 days. It also covers prompt disclosure of material events, related-party rules and corporate-governance standards. Thanks to LODR, the NSE/BSE filings pages work as your newsfeed.
- SAST (Takeover) Regulations: cross 5% ownership and you disclose, then you disclose every ±2% thereafter. Cross 25% and you must make an open offer to public shareholders for at least another 26%. Creeping-acquisition limits stop promoters from buying control by stealth.
- PIT (Prohibition of Insider Trading) Regulations: insiders trade only in open windows, and their trades are disclosed to the exchanges within days. That gives you another breadcrumb feed.
- Then come the rulebooks for mutual funds, FPIs, brokers, merchant bankers and rating agencies. Appeals go to the Securities Appellate Tribunal (SAT). The exchanges themselves are SEBI's first-line enforcers, handling listing compliance, surveillance and circuit limits.
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What does the SEC do in the US?
SEC (Securities and Exchange Commission) was created by the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, after 1929 made the case. The US architecture splits cleanly, and it's easy to remember. The 1933 Act governs issuing securities, which means registering with full disclosure in the world of the S-1. The 1934 Act governs trading them: periodic reporting, exchanges, brokers, manipulation, insider-trading enforcement.
The SEC's philosophy is disclosure, and it doesn't review merit. It forces complete, truthful filings and then lets you lose money in a fully-disclosed disaster. SEBI's modern regime takes the same stance. An "observations-issued" DRHP or an "effective" S-1 carries no regulator's endorsement of quality. Learn the filing alphabet now, because you'll be reading these documents for decades:
| Filing | What it is |
|---|---|
| S-1 / F-1 | IPO registration (domestic / foreign issuer) |
| 10-K / 10-Q / 8-K | Annual report / quarterly report / material-event report ("results out," "CEO resigned"); an SEC proposal of May 2026 would let companies report semiannually instead of quarterly, so check whether it was adopted |
| DEF 14A | Proxy statement — pay, board, governance (Phase 3 & 8 gold) |
| 20-F | Annual report of foreign listers — how Infosys or HDFC Bank report to the SEC |
| 13D / 13G | 5%+ stake disclosures (activist vs passive) |
| 13F | Quarterly portfolio disclosure of big institutional managers |
| Form 4 | Insider trades, within 2 business days |
Every one of them is free on EDGAR at sec.gov, and full-text searchable at efts.sec.gov. FINRA, the brokers' self-regulator, and the PCAOB, the audit watchdog, complete the US picture. In India the MCA administers the Companies Act for all companies, listed or not. Its MCA21 system holds the filings your unlisted competitors make. IRDAI and PFRDA regulate insurers and pensions as investors.
Where does the RBI come into the stock market?
Where the RBI touches markets, and the tri-regulator map India runs on:
- The price of money. The RBI's Monetary Policy Committee sets the repo rate, the gravity acting on every asset price, and Phase 7 makes that precise. Equity analysts track RBI policy the way US analysts track the Fed.
- The government bond market is RBI turf. The RBI is the government's debt manager. It auctions G-Secs and T-bills, runs the trading platform (NDS-OM) and oversees its clearing (CCIL). The "10-year G-Sec yield" will later be your risk-free-rate input for every Indian valuation, and it's made in RBI-land. The NSE has no part in it.
- Currency. The rupee trades under FEMA, with the RBI managing the float and the reserves. The RBI also sets FPI debt limits and hedging rules. Every FII flow you read about crosses an RBI-regulated FX market.
- Banks and NBFCs as market actors. The RBI caps banks' capital-market exposures, approves any 5%+ ownership stake in a bank, and regulates the NBFCs whose market funding can transmit stress into equities. Remember IL&FS in 2018. You'll meet it again as case material in Phase 2 and 5.
- Payments. UPI, which is RBI and NPCI infrastructure, is literally how retail IPO money gets blocked under ASBA.
So who do you ask? Equities, corporate bonds, mutual funds, IPOs: ask SEBI and the exchanges. G-Secs, money markets, FX, banks: ask the RBI. Overlaps get coordinated in the Financial Stability and Development Council (FSDC). The US splits along similar lines. The SEC handles securities and the CFTC handles futures. The Fed handles banks and money, and it moves markets through policy without regulating the stock exchange.