Nasdaq, NSE eye joint investments in startups

NEW DELHI: The National Stock Exchange of India (NSE) and Nasdaq are looking to jointly invest in startups and launch each other’s indices in the US and India as part of their tie-up that goes beyond technology.

Nasdaq’s venture fund invests in companies with technologies that are often deployed for its use and NSE may jointly invest in India, Israel or the Silicon Valley, the Indian exchange’s managing director and CEO Vikram Limaye said.

Nasdaq has signed a memorandum of understanding with NSE to develop a customized real-time clearing, risk management and settlement technology for India’s leading stock exchange. The new post-trade technology will replace NSE’s current clearing and settlement system operated by the National Securities Clearing Corporation Limited (NSCCL), its wholly-owned subsidiary.

Limaye indicated that soon Nasdaq 100 or Nifty 50 could be used by the two exchanges but clarified that there would be no underlying derivatives based on the indices.

With few listings by Indian companies in recent years, and several Asian companies such as Xiaomi looking to list in Hong Kong, the task for exchanges such as Nasdaq has become more challenging. Some of the Indian start-ups too are expected to list in the coming years.

“There are some rally interesting companies still to come out of China, it’s a competitive situation in terms of making sure that they think of US as the destination of choice. In terms of India we have four listings, just four, which is a small number in comparison to some large market... We would like to have other companies list on Nasdaq. We would like to see a situation where a company lists here and we see a pretty seamless experience in listing in the US. We don’t know when that will happen but we are both (NSE and Nasdaq) are pretty focused on. They would both have to be pretty large companies, if you are a global brand or a technology or biotech company, then it is interesting to look at tapping… we are working on that,” said Nasdaq president and CEO Adena Friedman.

National Stock Exchange of India Ltd (NSE)