Mumbai: Augmont Enterprises, an integrated gold platform, has announced a tie-up with the National Stock Exchange (NSE) to promote the adoption of Electronic Gold Receipts (EGRs), a Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI)-regulated, exchange-traded instrument that converts physical gold into a dematerialised security held in investors’ demat accounts.
EGRs are among the world’s first exchange-traded, physically backed gold instruments to integrate refining, vaulting, trading, lending, and physical redemption within a single regulated framework.
EGRs aim to provide liquidity to India’s massive gold holdings, estimated at 30,000-35,000 tonnes in private hands, much of which has remained economically idle. Gold imports reached an all-time high of USD 71.98 billion in FY26, accounting for nearly 9.2 per cent of total merchandise imports. By channelling domestically held gold to manufacturers through the Stock Lending and Borrowing (SLB) mechanism, EGRs can reduce India’s dependence on imported bullion, easing pressure on the current account deficit.
As part of the strategic tie-up, Augmont will deploy its comprehensive ecosystem for EGR creation, redemption, liquidity provision, delivery, and price discovery, bringing together its more than 4.2 crore registered users, over 4,975 jewellers on the SPOT platform, more than 4,600 retail touchpoints, over 80 Gold For All stores, and API integrations with leading stockbrokers and financial services providers.
“The NSE EGR framework has been created to establish a transparent, efficient, and exchange-regulated marketplace for physical gold in India. As more participants join the ecosystem, the market will benefit from improved liquidity, greater standardisation, and wider investor participation,” said Sriram Krishnan, Chief Business Development Officer, NSE.
“EGRs will change the way Indians deal with physical gold. Combining the best of ETFs and digital gold, EGRs, for the first time, bring together the commodity, currency, and financial asset dimensions of gold in a single instrument, letting people trade it like a share, redeem it as a coin or jewellery from their jeweller, lend it to earn a return, or borrow against it, all within a SEBI-regulated framework,” said Ketan Kothari, Whole-time Director, Augmont Enterprises.
Augmont is an India Good Delivery-accredited refiner, empanelled across exchanges, including MCX, for futures delivery across all gold contracts. It is also an authorised participant for gold ETFs, creating a natural bridge between the ETF and EGR ecosystems, the company said.
Disclaimer : This story is auto aggregated by a computer programme and has not been created or edited by DOWNTHENEWS. Publisher: deccanchronicle.com
