Securities and Exchange Board of India

The Reserve Bank of India is the country’s central bank, set up in 1935 under the Reserve Bank of India Act and nationalised in 1949.

IRDAI, set up in 1999 and headquartered in Hyderabad, regulates the insurance companies; its Mumbai office in Bandra Kurla Complex sits among the insurers it supervises, most of which are headquartered in the city.

PFRDA regulates the National Pension System and the pension fund managers; it is headquartered in Delhi, and the pension fund managers it licenses — SBI, LIC, UTI, HDFC, ICICI, Kotak and others — are Mumbai companies.

BSE is Asia’s oldest stock exchange, begun in 1875 as the Native Share and Stock Brokers’ Association under a banyan tree near Horniman Circle, and housed since 1980 in the 29-storey Phiroze Jeejeebhoy Towers on Dalal St

NSE was set up in 1992 at the Government’s instance to bring screen-based trading to India and began operations in 1994 from Exchange Plaza in Bandra Kurla Complex.

MCX, set up in 2003 and run from Exchange Square in Andheri East, is India’s largest commodity derivatives exchange, trading gold, silver, crude oil, natural gas, copper and other metals.

CDSL, promoted by BSE in 1999 and listed since 2017, is the larger of India’s two securities depositories by number of accounts, holding investors’ shares in electronic form; its head office is Marathon Futurex in Lower

NSDL, set up in 1996 as the first depository in India, holds the larger share of securities by value and is run from Trade World in Kamala Mills, Lower Parel; it listed on the exchanges in 2025.