Speaking to The Financial Express, company managing director and chief executive officer Birendra Kumar said, "all the basic requirements for starting stock broking are ready and we are waiting for some minor legal clearances."

"Most of the clearances from the Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) are already through and some more are required." He said the stock broking operations are most likely to start before the end of March 2001.SBI Caps has already taken the membership of both the premier stock exchanges - NSE and BSE.

Initially, the firm intends to buy and sell shares on behalf of the institutional players and gradually move to the retail level."Since SBI Caps has large number of companies as clients, it would be better to start the broking business with them," Mr Kumar said.SBI Caps, a subsidiary of State Bank of India (SBI), is another big institution to venture into the stock broking business in a big way. Other who have already ventured into this include, ICICI through ICICI Direct and HDFC through HDFC Securities.

However, the major difference between these institutions and SBI Caps is that it is not focussing initially on the Internet trading and retail investors. Initially, the broking business by Sbi was expected to start through a subsidiary of the bank but later the plans were changed.Mr Kumar stated that the broking will be another unit of SBI Caps and not a separate company or subsidiary. It would also be independent of its Capital Markets unit, where it helps in fund raising and private placement of equities. Other units of the SBI Caps include - Project Advisory & Structured Finance, Mergers & Acquisitions and Advisory, Financial Engineering.