Mumbai, 9 July 2025:
On 9 July 2025, India celebrated the 149 th anniversary of it’s first and oldest stock exchange, the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE). This is what started in the shade of a gigantic banyan tree outside the Town Hall at Mumbai which has flourished to become one of the largest and most technologically updated bourses in the continent of Asia.
In 1850s Bombay, the banyan tree in front of the Town hall(Horniman Circus) served as a trading place where a few stockbrokers, mostly 20 in number, used to meet and trade in the balance shares of the textile mills and other enterprises. When the number of trade began to rise and the informal club of brokers expanded in numbers, they changed the places of their residence a few times and finally landed the Dalal Street. On 9 July 1875 the BSE was formalised as “The Native Share and Stock Brokers Association” and that initial membership consisted of only 318 members.
Ashishkumar Chauhan, the former MD and CEO of BSE said, We saw BSE grow through banyan roots to a billion transactions, that is what it has done to India in turning it into a modern economy. It was not a mere financial institution but something that could be said to be the foundation of growth of the industry in India.
The BSE is one of the indicators of the financial sector of India today and it has been involved in the trading of equity, debt, derivatives, mutual funds and SMEs. It was the oldest recognised exchange in India under Securities Contracts Regulation Act of 1957 by the Government of India. It is also the first Indian insurance company to go demutualised/corporatised in 2005.
In this regard, it is important to mention that BSE also introduced Sensex (Sensitive Index) in 1986 which is the first Indian equity index but still remains a barometer of Indian economy. It has been officially recognised as a dedicated stock exchange of SMEs in 2012 and introduced BSE STAR MF that came up to become largest mutual fund distribution pace in India.
Since the implementation of fully automated trading system in 1995, and in 2024 with a market capitalisation of more than 4 trillion, the BSE presently has more than 5,800 listings and it is in the top ten in terms of market capitalisation of stock markets globally.
There is, however, the banyan tree under which the fate of this historic day was thus decided and still overlooking sightseers about the origins of the Indian financial markets as they are today.
