AS SEEN ON SHARK TANK INDIA SEASON 5
For decades, India’s wealth has been locked inside its buildings.
Now, for the first time, policy, technology, and regulation are all moving in the same direction, and that could transform how we build, invest, and trade real estate. Here’s how asset tokenization in India has changed:
This month alone, three developments signalled that shift:
Together, they point to one conclusion: India’s most traditional asset is about to go digital.
Pretty simple fundamental: take real-world assets like land and property, and represent them as digital tokens recorded on a secure blockchain.
These tokens can be bought, sold, or used as collateral: instantly, without endless paperwork or months of clearance delays.
This is more than a tech experiment. It’s an economic lever. Maharashtra alone holds trillions in underutilised value. Converting part of that into liquid, tradeable assets could fast-track the state’s goal of becoming a $1 trillion economy by 2030.
If executed right, tokenisation could reduce real-estate transaction times from months to minutes, and finally make India’s slowest asset class its most dynamic.
In parallel, a small fintech startup, Terazo, has launched India’s first real estate tokenisation pilot under the regulatory sandbox at GIFT City (Gandhinagar, Gujarat)
Here’s how it works:
Terazo issued digital tokens against an under-construction commercial property worth USD 7 million, packaged within an Alternative Investment Fund (AIF). These tokens represent fractional ownership of AIF units, giving investors exposure to the project’s performance without owning the asset directly.
The International Financial Services Centres Authority (IFSCA), which regulates GIFT City, approved this pilot for accredited investors with net worth above USD 150,000.
By doing this, it opened a compliant pathway for foreign and NRI capital to participate in under-construction projects: something traditional REITs in India cannot do yet.
Read our full article on Fractional REs vs REITs in India (2025), here.
There are limits, of course. Payments must happen through fiat channels like USD escrow accounts, not crypto or stablecoins. But it’s still a landmark move: the first compliance-first model for tokenising Indian real estate.
A day before Maharashtra’s announcement, the Reserve Bank of India launched its deposit token pilot, showing that tokenisation isn’t a state initiative, but a coordinated national direction.
When central and state regulators, alongside IFSCA and SEBI, all test token-based instruments, it marks the beginning of something far larger: India’s regulated token economy.
Unlike the early crypto experiments, India’s model embeds compliance from day one. Each token is tied to a real-world asset, issued through registered intermediaries, and backed by traditional banking rails.
Or as one panellist at the Global Fintech Fest put it:
“India isn’t chasing the crypto wave. it’s building a financial architecture for trust.”
At the same fintech event, technologists and policymakers agreed on one thing: AI and tokenisation will shape the next decade of financial infrastructure.
AI makes tokenisation scalable. It can analyse millions of records: ownership, titles, market trends, and provide instant, trustworthy valuations.
It can also automate compliance, detect anomalies, and even manage “agentic AI” systems that verify ownership before a transaction is executed.
Tokenisation, in turn, gives AI something to work on: structured, verified, programmable assets. The two together make real estate behave more like a financial instrument, with traceable ownership, transparent history, and dynamic pricing.
That’s why many are calling this the beginning of programmable compliance — where rules are coded into the transaction itself.
For retail investors, especially NRIs, this means access to opportunities that were once out of reach.
With tokenisation, it’s now possible to own a small share of an institutional-grade property: say, 0.5% of a Pune office tower or a Bengaluru co-living space, without managing tenants, paperwork, or property tax filings.
For institutions, this opens an entirely new asset class:
The value creation isn’t speculative; it’s structural.
Tokenisation doesn’t invent wealth; it unlocks it faster.
There are still hurdles to overcome:
But these are the necessary constraints of doing it right.
If India executes this responsibly, it won’t just have tokenised assets: it’ll have tokenised trust.
Real estate has always been the cornerstone of Indian wealth. Now, it’s being rewritten as programmable, liquid, and globally investable capital.
At PropFTX, we see this transition every day. As the rails of compliance and technology come together, our goal is simple: to make Indian real estate as dynamic, accessible, and transparent as any modern asset class.
The next real estate boom won’t be built, it’ll be tokenised.
