The Securities and Exchange Board of India, better known as SEBI, has started something new to help people understand how to protect their money in India’s fast-moving investment world. This week the regulator rolled out an AI-powered multilingual phone campaign to teach investors about simple safety tools they can use before making payments.
Instead of relying only on notices or website updates, the campaign will use smart computers to call a group of real investors. The goal is to help people learn how to check bank accounts and digital payment IDs before sending money to brokers or advisors.
What Is the Phone Campaign About?
SEBI’s new calling campaign focuses on two things:
- The SEBI Check Tool: This is a feature where anyone can check if a broker or intermediary is truly registered with SEBI before giving them money.
- Validated UPI Handles: These are special payment addresses that are verified and safe to use when sending money for investments.
By calling people and explaining these tools, SEBI wants to make sure investors don’t fall for fake investment schemes or tricksters pretending to be legitimate.
Why Is SEBI Doing This?
India has millions of retail investors. Some are new to investing and others have been doing it for years. Still, everyone can make mistakes if they are not sure how to check someone’s credentials. SEBI says that by explaining these tools in multiple languages through helpful calls folks will understand how to stay safe online.
The phone calls will use artificial intelligence, which means computers generate human-like speech in many languages. This helps SEBI reach more people in their own languages, including Hindi, English, and other regional languages.
How Will the Calls Work?
SEBI says this campaign is just a pilot, which means it is being tested first to see how well it works. Only a small number of individual investors will get these calls at first. They will hear explanations about how the SEBI Check Tool and the validated UPI handles work, and some common questions people ask.
To make sure people don’t get confused with spam or scam calls, SEBI has told everyone that the official calls will come only from one number: 1600-313-384. If someone gets a similar call from any other number, that may not be legitimate.
Who Helped SEBI With This Technology?
To build this campaign, SEBI worked with Sarvam, an Indian AI company that makes smart computer models that understand many Indian languages. Sarvam’s technology helps computers speak and listen in different languages so that more people can be included.
Sarvam is one of the local AI companies that has been gaining attention in India because it focuses on tools tailored to Indian users, not just English speakers. Its systems are trained on lots of local language content so that answers sound natural and clear.
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What This Means for Investors
For investors, this campaign has a simple goal: teach people how to protect their money. SEBI believes that when investors know how to check digital payment details and look up broker credentials with these tools, they will be less likely to fall for fraud.
People who get these calls will learn things like:
- How to use the SEBI Check Tool before sending money,
- Why it matters to verify UPI IDs and QR codes, and
- How to tell a real SEBI communication from a fake one.
In the coming weeks, SEBI will watch how people respond to these calls and decide if the program should be expanded to reach even more investors.
