Over 10 mn demat a/cs opened so far

There seems to be a rush to open new demat accounts by investors with a total of about 15 lakh accounts getting opened in the first three months of this year.

The number of demat accounts "" an investor is required to own for making investments in the stock markets "" has crossed the one-crore mark for the first time since the trading in dematerialised or paperless shares was introduced more than a decade ago.

"There has been several number of quality IPOs (initial public offerings) such as MindTree Consulting, GBN-IBN, Idea Cellular and Power Finance Corporation. The rise in number of demat accounts is mainly coming from retail investor to participate in these IPOs," said S Muhnot, managing director of brokerage outfit IDBI Capital Market Services.

In the last three months alone, over 11 lakh new accounts were opened with National Securities Depository Ltd (NSDL) and this includes activation of those accounts which were frozen from January this year due to non-compliance of Income Tax Department's Permanent Account Number (PAN).

According to Reserve Bank of India's last year's report, only about five per cent of household savings are channeled into the stock market. But, analysts feel that this figure may have gone up a couple of percentage points in the last 6-8 months.

The increase in number is significant considering all the new demat accounts opened go through the stringent Know Your Clients (KYC) norms stipulated by the market regulator Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi).About 26 lakh demat accounts were frozen on January 1 this year, after Sebi made it mandatory that investors holding demat accounts should produce the PAN cards for opening demat accounts. "Most of new investors come into the stock markets through the primary market," said Dalpat Mehta of Relegare Securities. "Some of the issuers are really good. The rush in opening new accounts is mainly for new issue applications, " he added.

MindTree Consulting is trading at Rs 830-range almost double from its issue price of Rs 425 per share while shares of Idea Cellular is quoting at Rs 95, a 26 per cent premium to the issue price of Rs 75. GBN-IBN shares have more than doubled to Rs 534 since listing on February 8.

Currently, demat accounts with premier depository National Securities Depository Ltd (NSDL) stands at 79 lakh while the other depository Central Depository Services Ltd (CDSL) has 23.67 lakh accounts, making the total demat accounts in the country at over 1.2 crore. Still, there are over 11 lakh account holders with NSDL who own shares in their accounts but yet to activate their accounts following the PAN requirement.