MUMBAI: With the equity market faring not so well, the frenetic speed with which brokerages added new clients slowed down sharply, adding only 1.51 crore new investor sign-ups in 2025 so far, the outgoing year marks the slowest pace of demat account openings in three years.
According to the latest data from the NSE, only 1.51 crore new demat accounts were opened so far this year by brokerages, compared to 2.36 crore fresh accounts added in 2024 and 1.6 crore in 2023.
With this, NSE's total registered investor base stood at around 12.4 crore as of December 19, up from 10.89 crore in 2024.
On the other hand, as of November 19, 2025, the BSE reported having around 20.5 crore demat accounts. However, this is not exclusively on this bourse and thus could have significant overlap with the NSE. The exact number of unique active investors on the BSE alone is not publicly disclosed.
According to the Securities and Exchange Board, there are around 13.6 crore unique individual investors in 2025 so far.
There was a significant boom in stock market participation, particularly since the pandemic, driven by digitalisation, increased financial literacy, and easy onboarding processes. The total number of demat accounts across NSDL and CDSL reached over 17.10 crore as of August 2024, surging from 4.01 crore in March 2020.
The slowdown is attributed to the deep volatility in the market during the year, especially the weaker show by small-caps, where retail investors are more active.
So far in 2025, the benchmarks Sensex and Nifty have gained only about 9% each, while broader markets showed divergent trends, with the BSE Midcap index barely moving (adding only 0.5%) while the BSE Smallcap index is down 9%.
The decline in new account openings in 2025 is spread across states and regions. The six largest contributor states—Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra, Gujarat, Tamil Nadu, Bengal and Rajasthan—have together accounted for 53.34% of new accounts opened, compared to 53.68% in 2024. Maharashtra remains the single largest contributor adding 1.97 crore new investors during the year.