Sebi puts data analytics project on hold for now

Mumbai: Markets regulator Sebi has put on hold its proposed data analytics project, through which it wanted to track possible manipulations such as insider trading and front running, after most shortlisted firms opted out due to low budget, two people aware of the development said.

The regulator scrapped the tender last month as six out of the eight shortlisted firms did not submit the final bids, they said.

“It appears the budget Sebi had envisaged was low, so most entities including top tech firms such as Infosys, Wipro, IBM India and PwC have opted out when the time came to submit the final bids,” one of them said.

Infosys, Wipro, PwC and IBM India declined to comment, while Sebi did not respond to an email query sent to it as of press time Friday.

In May 2019, the regulator had invited expression of interest (EoI) from reputed and reliable solution providers for implementation of a data analytics project and building of data models at Sebi. The project was to develop new models, implementing analytics tools, establishing linkages between various entities in the market, automated extraction of details from documents filed with Sebi, and prediction of market manipulations such as insider trading and front running.

Later, Sebi shortlisted eight companies — Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Capgemini Tech, Decimal Point, and NEC Technologies besides the four cited earlier.

In June 2020, the regulator had invited tenders from shortlisted bidders for design, development, implementation and maintenance of data lake and analytics platform. They were asked to submit their proposals by July 28, 2020.

“Currently Sebi’s abilities are quite limited... it can track artificial trading between only two parties,” an expert from the analytics field told ET. “But it has lower capabilities to track abnormal trading in a syndicate between many entities. Any investigation then has to be manual, which takes months or years.”