NSE and BSE in new turf war over academic depository

NSE and BSE in new turf war over academic depository

RIVAL stock exchanges NSE and BSE are having a go at each other as they strongly compete for a major slice of the National Academic Depository (NAD) cake. They see demat business expanding after the government focus on digitisation of academic records.

Last month, NSE-promoted NSDL Database Management (NDML) wrote to the ministry of human resources development pointing out that the website name (www.nad.co.in) of CDSL Ventures (CVL) is similar to the government www.nad. gov.in. This prompted the government to ask CDSL Ventures to change its URL.

BSE was the main promoter of Central Depository Services (India) (CDSL) initially and later divested stake to leading banks. But it still plays the role of anchor investor in CDSL.

CVL, however, continues with its website www.nad.co.in besides opening another portal -cvl.nad.co.in. Now, while opening the original website users are automatically redirected to the new site.

Google throws www.nad.co.in as the top search for NAD.

Now, CVL has brought to the notice of the government about data uploaded by NDML which is higher in number than its own, sources said. The government has asked them to inform the criteria which they use to upload the certificates, sources said.

After the entry of NSE into the stock market, there has been a history of the two exchanges competing for the business. NSE had also a running battle with commodity exchange MCX after it replaced ICICI Bank as anchor investor in other major commodity bourse NCDEX.

The government has announced digitisation of all academic certificates awarded by universities and institutes to minimise time constraint in verifying their genuineness.

The National Academic Depository (NAD) is an online store house of all academic awards -- certificates, diplomas, degrees, marksheets etc. duly digitised and lodged by academic institutions and boards. NAD ensures easy access to and retrieval of an award and validates and guarantees its authenticity and safe storage, according to a statement by CVL.

Maintaining academic awards in an electronic depository would provide benefit to educational institutions, students and employers by enabling online access of academic awards which will eliminate the need for persons to approach educational institutions for obtaining transcripts of such awards or marks-sheets for verification, CVL said.

The main benefit for the verifiers would be to check the genuineness of a certificate in 24 hours against the current average of 3-4 months. While both CVL and NDML are allowed to keep the degrees for free of cost for next two years, the verifiers will have to pay fees as charged by universities and institutions for the verification purpose.

So far, 40,75,781 degrees have been kept in demat form while 6312 students and 47 verifiers have been registered with the government’s NAD. The third party verification would be subject to the consent of the student concerned.

Source | Financial Chronicle | 12 July 2017

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Rizvi Institute of Management