Rikom-Trust becomes the first Russian firm to trade Nifty 50 futures on the NSE, the latest step in a three-year campaign by Moscow’s financial industry to plant a flag in one of the world’s fastest-growing equity markets.
A Moscow-based brokerage has executed the first derivatives transactions on India’s National Stock Exchange by a Russian firm, trading futures on the Nifty 50 — the benchmark index of India’s 50 largest listed companies. The trades by Rikom-Trust mark a quiet but significant milestone: for the first time, Russian retail capital has gained live, direct exposure to Indian equity derivatives through a regulated domestic channel.
The move is the latest in a concerted push by Russian financial institutions to gain footholds in India since Western sanctions largely severed their access to European and American capital markets after 2022. Rikom-Trust obtained a Foreign Portfolio Investor (FPI) licence from India’s Securities and Exchange Board (SEBI) in March 2025, allowing it to trade on local exchanges in its own name on behalf of clients. Access is currently limited to qualified investors through advisory or trust management arrangements. The firm expects to raise at least $5 million in India-focused assets within 18 months.
“We see significant investor interest in overseas investments, with the Indian market attracting heightened attention,” said Dmitry Tselischev, the company’s managing director. “Clients want additional returns through instruments of one of the largest and most dynamically developing economies in the world.”
Three Years of Groundwork
Rikom-Trust did not arrive here alone. The path was broken by Alfa-Capital, which became the first Russian entity registered by SEBI as a foreign portfolio investor in February 2023, partnering with Indian custodian Orbis Financial Corporation to handle settlements in rupees, with returns converted back into roubles offshore. Sberbank, Russia’s largest state-controlled lender, followed with an FPI Category I licence in October 2023 — a higher-tier status that grants access to offshore derivative instruments linked to Indian equities and certain tax benefits, while imposing stricter beneficial ownership disclosure requirements. UK Pervaya, formerly Sberbank’s asset management subsidiary, has since launched a closed-end mutual fund tracking the Nifty 50 Net Total Return index. Broker Alor+ received dual FPI licences in June 2024.
Rikom-Trust’s futures trades are, in that sense, less a beginning than a coming-of-age: the moment when licences on paper translated into live market activity.
Why India — and Why Now
The appeal is not hard to understand. India’s total stock market capitalisation stands at approximately $5 trillion. GDP growth for the fiscal year ending March 2026 is forecast at between 7.2 and 7.4 percent by the Reserve Bank of India, the Asian Development Bank, and India Ratings, a Fitch Group affiliate. Inflation fell as low as 0.71 percent in November 2025 — a historic trough — giving the RBI room to cut its benchmark repo rate four times over the year by a cumulative 125 basis points. Consensus earnings growth across MSCI India constituents is projected at 16 percent for 2026, according to Invesco. The NSE — the world’s largest derivatives exchange by number of contracts traded, listing approximately 2,700 companies — provides the infrastructure to match.
For Russian investors, India carries a further attraction beyond the numbers: it is one of the few large, liquid markets that has proved willing to receive their capital at all.
Licences Are the Easy Part
Industry participants are candid about how much remains unresolved. Opening custodian accounts, building settlement infrastructure, navigating rupee convertibility, and competing in a market already served by deep domestic institutions have all slowed progress. Several firms that hold licences have yet to launch client products.
In February 2025, Renaissance Capital co-owner Maxim Orlovsky told Kommersant that the firm had obtained a foreign investor licence in China but had not entered that market, citing lack of demand and operational complexity. Separately, in January 2026, Igor Danilenko, the firm’s chief investment officer, said that Renaissance Capital’s plans to access the Indian and Brazilian markets depended less on licensing than on resolving capital-transfer logistics — what he described as the challenge of moving money. Finam, Russia’s largest retail brokerage, announced Brazil B3 access for clients by end-2024; as of January 2026, it had not launched.
Moscow Exchange has offered a partial workaround: a rouble-settled futures contract on the iShares MSCI India UCITS ETF, launched on 25 February 2025 and available to retail investors after a standard suitability test. The fund tracks approximately 85 percent of India’s total equity market capitalisation. It is an indirect route, but a functioning one — and for now, for most Russian investors, the only one.
The Nifty 50 is maintained by NSE Indices Ltd, a wholly owned subsidiary of the National Stock Exchange of India. SEBI is headquartered in Mumbai.
