To start with, NSE's reach has spread from 100-odd cities to more than 300 cities today. Similarly, volumes on the NSE have increased by 200-500 per cent even as the Indian market capitalisation has crossed Rs 10,00,000 crore. Today we also have a well-established depository, which has eliminated the hassles of dealing in physical paper and simultaneously solving the problems of bad delivery. Computerised trading has brought in transparency while the cost of transaction has fallen drastically. The level of automation in banks is also high.
Computerised trading allows for more people being able to trade on the bourses.
Even the domestic mutual fund industry is much stronger than what it was a few years ago. It would be better to ask whether India is ready for an equity derivatives market since derivatives in other areas like commodity forwards, exchanges rate forwards, interest rate swaps, etc., are already prevalent in India. India's debt market has a total market capitalisation of close to Rs.125 trillion and the equity market's capitalisation is close to Rs 10 trillion. Internationally, derivatives' trading has succeeded in countries with much smaller markets. Israel, Johannesburg and Brazil are all examples of these.