On Saturday, April 25, 2026, India’s capital market regulator SEBI marked 38 years of its existence, with Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman gracing the occasion.
Delivering the keynote address at Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI)’s Foundation Day in Mumbai, Sitharaman identified cybersecurity as the single most pressing challenge facing Indian markets today.
She warned that a single successful cyberattack on a major exchange, depository, clearing corporation, or large broker could disrupt markets on a national scale, erase wealth, and shake public confidence in ways that take years to rebuild.
Sitharaman also stressed how AI-powered tools were making cyberattacks faster, more adaptive, and autonomous, capable of exploiting software vulnerabilities, interfering with source code, and coordinating intrusions that evolve in real time to evade detection. "The tools of attack are evolving at high speed, and the tools of defence must evolve even faster," added the minister.
She then lauded SEBI’s Cybersecurity and Cyber Resilience Framework. At the event, the Finance Minister also launched ‘Mission Jagrook’, SEBI’s new nationwide investor awareness initiative.
She also took the opportunity to speak about the rising cases of unregistered "fin-influencers", calling for better regulation. "We need enabling frameworks for responsible financial education, but we should not tolerate the monetisation of uninformed retail investor trust for personal enrichment," said Sitharaman.
At the event, SEBI Chairman Tuhin Kanta Pandey lauded the growth of Indian markets, which now have over 5,900 listed companies and more than 140 million unique investors, with market capitalisation growing at approximately 15 per cent CAGR over the last decade and mutual fund assets expanding at over 20 per cent annually.
The primary market alone facilitates capital formation of nearly Rs. 10 trillion every year, he said.
Market watchdog SEBI was born on April 12, 1988, and received full statutory powers under the SEBI Act in 1992. Thirty-eight years on, it has overhauled everything from trading systems to settlement cycles and corporate governance norms. And now, SEBI is deploying AI and digital forensics to detect complex market manipulation patterns, he stated. "But the journey is far from over. The coming years will demand not just regulation, but vision," added Pandey.
