MUMBAI, Nov. 29

DOTEX, an NSE.IT and i-flex venture, has formally launched its DotEx plaza, an aggregate application service portal, which allows member brokers of NSE to directly trade on the exchange using a common Internet infrastructure.

The plaza aims at integrating multiple market intermediaries such as brokers, depositories, banks and investment consultants onto a single platform.

Talking to newspersons at the launch on Wednesday, Mr D.R. Mehta, Chairman, Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI), said that the introduction of such a platform takes care of the small and medium players.

``Reforms do not require that the middle-rung is eliminated. Such a platform puts the small and medium players on par with the big operators,'' he said.

Commenting on the volumes soaring from a daily traded volume of Rs 400 crore to the current Rs 10,000-12,000 crore, the SEBI chief said the benefits of a growing market will always filter down to both the players as well as market investors.

Mr Ravi Narain, Managing Director, National Stock Exchange, said the plaza is convergence of financial products to one distribution channel.

The plaza is also built on architecture and infrastructure which is capable of being scaled up over time. As such, it is geared to handle large volumes of trade, officials said.

The tariff structure is based on a `pay as you earn' philosophy with a fee of three paise per Rs 100, for all transactions of Rs 100 crore and above.

The plaza, which has 30 brokers registered with it so far, is offering early bird tariffs, wherein participating brokers will be placed at the lowest slab of rate until March 31, 2001.

This would entitle them to a waiver of the registration fee and a 50-per cent discount on annual subscription, officials said.

DotEx Plaza will offer detailed quotes on stocks and mutual funds, advanced charting tools, watch lists and portfolio tools, market commentaries, positions, technical analysis, a wide variety of news categories such as stock markets, financial market commodities etc.

According to Mr V. Srinivasan, COO, DotEx, the plaza is WAP-enabled thereby increasing the access channels through which investors can place orders.

Officials said so far, nine banks have approached the company to provide payment gateway for the brokers' plaza. Amongst these are HDFC Bank, Citibank and UTI Bank.

The company has sourced content from leading providers such as Bridge (for online information), www.capitalmarkets.com and Business Line. Planetasia, a Bangalore-based software company, helped build the content site while content integration and management is being handled by IRIS.

Compaq has supplied the Intel-based servers and acted as systems integrator. The server farm is co-located at VSNL's Prabhadevi facility in Mumbai.