Augmont Enterprises Limited, one of India’s leading integrated gold platform, today announced a historic strategic tie-up with the National Stock Exchange of India (NSE), marking a significant milestone in the evolution of India’s organised bullion market. The collaboration aims to accelerate the adoption of Electronic Gold Receipts (EGRs) – a SEBI-regulated, exchange-traded instrument that converts physical gold into a dematerialised security held in investors’ demat accounts.
As part of the strategic tie-up, Augmont will deploy its comprehensive ecosystem for EGR creation, redemption, liquidity provision, delivery and price discovery—bringing together its 4.2 crore+ registered users, 4,975+ jeweller network on the SPOT platform, 4,600+ retail touchpoints, 80+ Gold For All stores, and API integrations with leading stockbrokers and financial service providers. Augmont is an India Good Delivery accredited refiner, empanelled across exchanges including MCX for futures delivery across all gold contracts, and is an authorised participant for gold ETFs—creating a natural bridge between the ETF and EGR ecosystems.
India’s UPI Moment for Gold
Just as UPI transformed payments by creating a secure, interoperable and regulated digital infrastructure, EGRs have the potential to do the same for gold. They enable physical gold to be held, traded, pledged and lent through a single exchange-regulated framework, unlocking the economic value of India’s vast household gold holdings and bringing them into the formal financial system.
India holds an estimated 30,000–35,000 tonnes of gold in private hands. Yet this wealth has remained economically idle. Each EGR represents direct ownership of physical gold at exchange-determined prices, while depositors retain full price exposure and can earn a return by lending their gold to jewellery manufacturers through NSE’s Securities Lending and Borrowing (SLB) platform.
The implications for India’s import bill are significant. Gold imports reached an all-time high of USD 71.98 billion in FY26, accounting for nearly 9.2% of total merchandise imports. By channelling domestically held gold to manufacturers via the SLB mechanism, EGRs can reduce India’s dependence on imported bullion, easing pressure on the current account deficit while creating a multiplier effect for the economy without the government having to pay interest.
A Product Without Parallel
EGRs are among the world’s first exchange-traded, physically-backed gold instruments to integrate refining, vaulting, trading, lending and physical redemption within a single regulated framework.
EGRs combine exchange regulation, transparent price discovery, guaranteed settlement and an integrated lending mechanism, creating a significantly larger opportunity in a market like India.
Shri Sriram Krishnan, Chief Business Development Officer (CBDO), NSE, said:
“The NSE EGR framework has been created to establish a transparent, efficient and exchange-regulated marketplace for physical gold in India. As more participants join the ecosystem, the market will benefit from improved liquidity, greater standardisation and wider investor participation. The empanelment of refiners and participation of liquidity providers are key building blocks in developing a trusted and robust bullion market infrastructure.”
Quote from Ketan Kothari, Whole-time Director, Augmont Enterprises Limited
“EGRs will change the way Indians deal with physical gold. Combining the best of ETFs and digital gold, EGRs for the first time bring together the commodity, currency and financial asset dimensions of gold in a single instrument — letting you trade it like a share, redeem it as a coin or jewellery from your trusted jeweller, lend it to earn a return, or borrow against it — all within a SEBI-regulated framework. No other gold product anywhere in the world offers that versatility. At Augmont, we have built the infrastructure for exactly this moment, and we are committed to deploying our entire ecosystem of jewellers, retail touchpoints and broker integrations to make gold a truly productive asset for every Indian household.”
Quote from Surendra Mehta, National Secretary, India Bullion and Jewellers Association (IBJA)
“EGRs will be 100x of what the tokenised gold market is today. They offer something no blockchain-based gold product can: exchange-traded price discovery, guaranteed settlement, standardised quality, and a lending mechanism that channels idle gold directly to the manufacturers who need it.
Globally, people thought blockchain-based currencies would transform money. None of them have come close to what UPI has done. EGRs will show the world how standardised gold should be dealt with—across its entire lifecycle, from mine to market to consumer and back. India didn’t just adopt digital payments; India defined the global standard. With EGRs, India will do the same for gold.”
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