New Delhi, Sept 23: Despite the huge investment costs incurred in setting up a Web-based trading facility, atleast 15 per cent of Indian stock brokers are likely to offer such services as and when the Securities and Exchange Board of India permits internet trading.Stating this at a seminar on Web-based trading at the India Internet World, N Muralidharan, business head, technology and e-solutions group of Schoolnet India Ltd (the technology arm of IL&FS), predicted that Web-based transactions would reach the one million mark in terms of daily transactions.
"To begin with, three to four brokers will start offering Web-based trading, thereby accounting for about 80,000 transactions a day," he said.
Muralidharan predicted that transactions would grow if stock exchanges induced confidence in the new method of placing orders for scrips through self-service kiosks and call centres.
Striking a note of caution on the growth of Web-based trading in India, Muralidharan said that its growth was limited by the low penetration of PCs, limited technology-savvy investors and inadequate banking interface. Besides this, the high cost of infrastructure enabling secure stock transactions -- in the range of Rs 2.5 crore -- may also be an impediment, he said.
Copyright © 1999 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.