India’s securities regulator signed an agreement that would let it use a government language platform to widen access to market information, while the agencies have yet to announce which services could follow or when.
The Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) signed the memorandum of understanding with the Digital India BHASHINI Division in Mumbai on Nov. 3, and the regulator said it took effect that day. The division operates under Digital India Corporation. SEBI gains access to BHASHINI tools for translating text, transcribing speech, generating audio from text and extracting text from images. The partners also plan to improve the platform’s handling of securities-market terminology.
At a workshop held alongside the signing, India’s Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology said participants considered possible translations of SEBI’s websites, mobile services, videos, documents and forms. They also discussed voice assistance and speech-to-speech translation. These were presented as potential applications; neither agency identified a first service or rollout date.
The ministry said BHASHINI supports 36 Indian languages for text and 23 for voice. Those are platform-wide capabilities, and the announcements do not say which languages would be selected for SEBI information or services. The ministry described investors in smaller cities and underserved communities as possible beneficiaries, citing language barriers to understanding financial information.
SEBI Whole Time Member Sandip Pradhan said language selection is central to effective investor outreach and connected the agreement to Project Jagrook, the regulator’s investor-awareness campaign. The ministry framed the effort as a way to improve access to investor education as well as financial information.
The move builds on earlier multilingual services at SEBI. SEBI Chair Tuhin Kanta Pandey said Feb. 7 that its Electronic Consolidated Account Statement was available in 23 languages. His remarks establish a precedent for multilingual account information, but the agencies have not said whether the BHASHINI arrangement will extend that service or begin with other material.
