``We have a target of appointing 250 dealers across the country and we have already appointed 54 dealers in Mumbai, including some big brokers. In Delhi, 150 dealers attended our conference yesterday and the response has been encouraging,'' said M R Mayya, chairman, ISE. The officials of the exchange have initiated this drive in about 30 cities to rope in more dealers.

``Dealers as well as traders from participating regional stock exchanges (RSEs) will get access to the national segment of the RSEs and to NSE and BSE. On the other hand, the cost of a BSE card may run into a couple of crores,'' added Mayya. The dealers will be able to trade on the three exchanges through IAccess which is being offered at a cost of Rs 5 lakh per dealership.

``Our aim is to spread the equity cult in every corner of the country and with this kind of a setup, investors will be able to trade in 3500-odd scrips on the RSEs and those listed on the BSE and NSE,'' Mayya pointed out. On the question of liquidity (or rather lack of it) in most of the counters on the regional bourses, Mayya said that investors will get an opportunity to invest in some of the best scrips, which trade only on regional exchanges. ``The setup will provide investors with an opportunity to arbitrage and lad to price discovery,'' he added.

The exchange is in the process of setting up a subsidiary, ISE Securities and Services Ltd (ISS) which will get membership of both National and Bombay stock exchanges. ``ISS will be a non-trading member. After it gets the membership of the two bourses, dealers can become a member of ISE and trade on BSE and NSE. It is like a hub and spoke system,'' Mayya pointed out.The exchange also plans to introduce a modified carry forward system to impart better liquidity to group A stocks of the exchange. Besides, the exchange is keen on introducing options on stocks as part of its derivatives trading. ``Options on shares will be more popular among Indian investors than index-based futures,'' Mayya said. ISE does not have an index of its own at present.

Between October 1 and October 25, the exchange had a daily average turnover of Rs 1.62 crore with 8 scrips being traded on an average. The top five scrips, in terms of turnover during the period, were Reliance, SBI, Cybermate, Bank of Baroda and Telco. ``The turnover of ISE is expected to go up but a big chunk will now come from BSE and NSE since investors in a particular region hardly have any interest in scrips trading on any other RSE. The two premier bourses will now be able to reach out to more investors and price discovery will be better here,'' said a broker.