The country's largest custodian is positioning itself as the largest depository participant with the National Securities Depository Ltd (NSDL), realising fully well that this is the only way it can survive.

The winds of change are blowing stronger than ever with over one lakh share certificates being destroyed by the depository participant every day, up from 10-15,000 per day till recently. The vaults are emptying out at fast at SHCIL!

Having taken its time to go the whole hog, SHCIL has, in the past couple of months, come a long way. With over 15,000 investor accounts under its belt and a change in focus, it is now targeting the large NRI population in the Gulf. It has embarked on a seven-nation tour to attract NRIs to the Indian capitalmarkets through the depository.

SHCIL managing director B V Goud said the custodian is the only depository participant which is exclusively devoted to the depository and has no other business. This according to Guod, is going to be SHCIL's unique selling point. He said there is a clear shift in focus towards retail investors, something which the custodian never did as a share custodian.

Goud said SHCIL would enter into tie ups with local entities in the Gulf to facilitate dematerialisation of shares in this region. "We have covered Kuwait and Bahrain already and the response has been fairly encouraging," said Goud.

"With mandatory demat trading around the corner, the number of shares coming in for dematerialisation has jumped from 10-15,000 share certificates a day to about one lakh certificates a day. "This is a huge amount and we are gearing ourselves to face up to the increased demand from investors for the depository," said Goud.

Interestingly, Stock Holding Corporation has decided to reach out tosmall investors and to achieve this it has started deploying resources which were hitherto deployed for holding paper certificates.

For a start, 12 vans of the custodian, which were till now carting share certificates to and fro from the share vaults have been revamped with a coat of red paint to do the rounds of the city distributing demat forms. "The country's largest depository participant" is well etched on the van.More centres are on the cards. Four more are being opened in Mumbai alone to cater to the suburban population including one at the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE).

Tie-ups are being forged with banks. Centres are also being opened at New Delhi, Calcutta, Chennai, Hubli and Cochin.