The Hindu Business Line : Kolkata investors warm up to on-line trading

The true-blue Kolkata investor is taking to online trading in a big way, if trends mapped by the country's largest online trading portal ICICIdirect.com, are any indication.

The city's new-found liking for Web-based facilities is being attributed to a combination of several factors — the increasing number of young white-collar workers being one of the more significant reasons. Also, easier access to the Internet is, as in the rest of the country, a more fundamental factor driving the change.

As Mr Kedar Deshpande, V-P, ICICI Web Trade Ltd, points out, Kolkata is high on the portal's agenda, thanks to the volumes that are being generated here. Mumbai and Delhi are certainly on a higher plane, but eastern India's No 1 city is well on course when it comes to online investments.

Web-customers

Already, more than subtle changes are evident in the way Kolkatans have taken to trading. A number of broking companies, many of them being nationally-recognised names, have started scaling up operations in the metro. More e-broking platforms are also being offered.

"It often pays to have local companies hitting the market with their IPOs. That way, local investors, who may have tracked such developments more closely than their counterparts in other centres, become interested. As a result, more accounts are opened by investors in that region," Mr Deshpande mentioned.

ICICIdirect.com, which has so far signed up a million Web-customers, is in fact sure that Internet-based investment will pick up more across the country. And its clients, located in over 800 centres, will play a crucial role in contributing to the overall trading volumes of e-brokers. Among the latter, players like Kotak Mahindra and HDFC occupy prime positions.

Package

"There are roughly 2 crore shareholders in the Indian market. However, the number of demat accounts are about 70 lakhs. With merely 30 per cent of India's shareholders dematerialising their holdings, the potential on his front remains significant," Mr Deshpande added.

With this serving as the backdrop, e-broking outfits expect to record marked gains from the growing potential of online trading. They point out that Web-based trading now makes up about 20 per cent of the NSE's trading volumes.

ICICIdirect.com says it provides what has been billed as a `three-in-one' account for its clients. This is a package, comprising a bank account, a demat account and a trading account.

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