India’s investment landscape has become more familiar to retail investors, yet some parts of it can still feel difficult to navigate. Bonds, for instance, come with their own language: yields, credit ratings, maturity and liquidity. Understanding what these details mean, and how they fit together, can be as important as finding an investment in the first place.

That is the opportunity Vedant Raj Lohia set out to address when he launched BondVue in 2025. His focus is not simply on making bonds easier to buy, but on helping people understand what they are considering, what risks may be involved and what questions they should ask before making a decision.

Making access meaningful

Vedant’s interest in this space developed through his exposure to financial technology. After completing a postgraduate degree in Financial Technology at Imperial College Business School, he spent time observing how technology was changing the way people discovered and interacted with financial products. It helped shape a distinction that remains central to his thinking: putting a product online does not automatically make it accessible.

A digital platform can simplify the process of finding an investment, but investors still need the context to understand it. In bonds, a headline yield is only one part of the picture. The issuer’s ability to meet its obligations, the credit rating, the maturity date and the ease of selling a security can all affect how an investment should be assessed.

BondVue brings these considerations closer together. Investors can explore listed government and corporate bonds using details such as yield, credit rating, maturity and investment amount. Its calculator helps users examine potential cash flows, while the Learning Hub and Bonds 101 resources explain the concepts behind the numbers. The idea is to connect discovery, evaluation and learning, rather than treat them as separate steps.

A growing market, with room to grow

The opportunity is reflected in the market’s growth. India’s outstanding corporate bond market increased from around ₹17.5 lakh crore in FY2014 to 15 to ₹53.6 lakh crore in FY2024 to 25, growing at approximately 12% a year, according to the Economic Survey 2025 to 26. Fresh corporate bond issuances reached a record ₹9.9 lakh crore in FY2024 to 25. By the end of March 2026, outstanding issuances had risen further to about ₹59 lakh crore, according to SEBI.

Despite that expansion, corporate bonds account for only around 16% of India’s GDP. The comparable figures cited by SEBI are approximately 79% for South Korea, 54% for Malaysia and 38% for China. These markets differ in structure, so the numbers are not a simple like-for-like scorecard; they do, however, illustrate the headroom for India’s debt market to deepen and reach more participants.

For Vedant, growth in the market is only part of the story. The next step is helping more people become comfortable understanding the products within it. Broader participation depends not just on the availability of bonds, but also on whether investors can interpret the information, assess the risks and decide whether an opportunity suits their circumstances.

Not one product against another

This is also why BondVue’s approach is not about positioning bonds as an alternative to stocks or mutual funds. Different financial products serve different purposes, carry different risks and may play different roles depending on an investor’s goals and time horizon. Treating them as opposing choices can narrow the conversation before an investor has had the chance to understand the options.

BondVue also offers corporate fixed deposits, adding another product category to the platform’s broader fixed-income offering. The mindset Vedant wants to bring to the market is one of collaboration, not competition: bonds, equities, mutual funds and corporate FDs can be part of a more connected investment ecosystem, where people have the information to understand each product on its own terms.

That philosophy leaves room for the wider financial-services ecosystem to work together too. Platforms, educators, distributors and other market participants can all contribute to making financial products easier to understand. The common goal is not to persuade every investor towards one category, but to help more people make informed choices across the categories available to them.

When learning travels beyond one investor

One example from BondVue’s journey involved an investor who was unsure about the difference between a bond’s coupon rate and its yield, and which figure represented the return he could expect. Through his experience on BondVue and conversations with the platform’s experts, he gained a clearer understanding of how the two figures differ and what each tells an investor. That clarity helped him feel more confident when evaluating bond opportunities.

For Vedant, this captures why education matters. Financial literacy is not just about learning terminology at the point of purchase. It is about helping people ask the right questions, understand the information in front of them and feel better equipped to make informed decisions.

A more transparent investment journey

The wider market infrastructure is evolving alongside digital platforms. In February 2025, SEBI announced Bond Central, a centralised database portal for corporate bonds developed by the Online Bond Platform Providers Association in collaboration with market infrastructure institutions. The initiative aims to bring bond-related information together and support greater transparency.

Such developments and platforms like BondVue play complementary roles. Better information helps investors examine a security’s characteristics; a considered digital experience can make those details easier to navigate; and education can help people understand what the information means. None of these removes investment risk, but each can support a more informed decision-making process.

Beyond the transaction

Vedant’s longer-term ambition extends beyond creating a digital destination for bond discovery. It is to help make fixed income more approachable and build a marketplace that connects investors with opportunities while supporting a better understanding of the products available to them. Emerging technologies may shape financial markets over time, but the immediate challenge remains practical: make the existing market easier to navigate.

The numbers show a market that has grown significantly and still has room to develop. The human side of that growth is whether people feel better equipped to participate. For BondVue, that means treating understanding as part of access, and seeing the investment ecosystem as a whole, rather than a contest between products. A better investment conversation does not begin by asking people to choose sides. It begins by helping them understand their choices.

Sources for market figures

Government of India, Economic Survey 2025 to 26, section on the corporate bond market: growth from ₹17.5 lakh crore in FY2014 to 15 to ₹53.6 lakh crore in FY2024 to 25; annual growth of approximately 12%; record fresh issuances of ₹9.9 lakh crore in FY2024 to 25.

SEBI, Speaking Notes of Shri Amarjeet Singh, WTM, at the 25th FIMMDA to PDAI: outstanding corporate bond issuances of approximately ₹59 trillion at the end of March 2026 and corporate bond market size relative to GDP.

SEBI press release, 27 February 2025, on the launch of Bond Central.