Sebi bets big on technology; shortlists Infosys, Wipro, others for data solution

New Delhi: Markets regulator Sebi has shortlisted as many as seven companies, including Infosys, Wipro and Accenture Solutions, for providing a data solution that can handle vast amount of data from multiple sources.

Over the past few years, the regulator has been betting big on technology to address and handle challenges arising out of technological advancements in the markets.

To provide 'data lake' solution, the markets regulator had issued a notice in May, inviting expression of interest (EoI) from the interested parties.

The selected company will be responsible for designing, implementing and supporting a big data solution with analytical capabilities.

The data lake will contain large amount of structured (order, trade data among others), unstructured (annual reports and Sebi orders) and semi-structured data (XML -- a markup language designed to store and transport data. It encodes documents in a manner that is both human and machine-readable) .

"As the trading volumes are growing at an astronomical rate, a need is felt to build a data lake which can handle structured, semi-structured and unstructured data from multiple sources," the regulator had said.

Accordingly, the Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) invited bids from companies to provide such services.

After evaluating the responses, the regulator said in a notice, it has shortlisted seven firms -- Accenture Solutions, Capgemini Technology Services India, Hewlett Packard Enterprises (India), EIT Services India, Infosys, Wipro and Larsen & Toubro Infotech -- "for further process".

Data lake is a system that stores vast amount of data in its native form at any scale.

Besides, the regulator, in its annual report for 2018-19, said that it intends to deploy data analytics and new generation technologies to deal with various challenges in the market.

"Sebi would encourage adoption and usage of financial technology to further develop and maintain an efficient, fair and transparent securities market ecosystem which also promotes innovation in the securities market," Sebi Chairman Ajay Tyagi said in his statement in the annual report.

As per the report, the regulator would continue to strengthen market supervision through steps such as technology solutions being built to achieve the objective of identifying non-compliance and assisting in investigations.