What is CDSL, India’s registered share depository?

Certain services at CDSL were disrupted due to a suspected cyber attack over the weekend.

On its website, CDSL describes its foundational goal as “convenient, dependable and secured depository services”, and says that all its activities over the last two decades have been in support of that goal, at an affordable cost. (Photo via Wikimedia Commons)

Certain services at CDSL were disrupted due to a suspected cyber attack over the weekend, media reports said. The problem had been fixed by Sunday evening, the reports said.

What is CDSL?

CDSL, or Central Depositories Services India Ltd, is a government-registered share depository, alongside its other state-owned counterpart National Securities Depository Ltd (NSDL).

Share depositories hold shares in an electronic or dematerialised form and are an enabler for securities transactions, playing a somewhat similar role to what banks play in handling cash and fixed deposits. While banks help customers keep their cash in electronic form, share depositories help consumers store shares in a dematerialised form.

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CDSL was founded in 1999. It is a Market Infrastructure Institution or MII that is deemed as a crucial part of the capital market structure, providing services to all market participants, including exchanges, clearing corporations, depository participants, issuers and investors.

CDSL is led by its chairperson Balkrishna V Chaubal, who retired as Deputy Managing Director of State Bank of India, and its Managing Director & Chief Executive Officer Nehal Vora, a former Chief Regulatory Officer of BSE Limited.