India's oldest and largest stock exchange needed to computerise its operations, to retain its leadership. Naturally, it turned to CMC.

The product
BOLT: Bombay Online Trading System
The online trading system in use at the Stock Exchange, Mumbai, since 1995

The client
Mumbai Stock Exchange (BSE)
India's oldest stock exchange, it's 30-share sensitive index (Sensex) of the most-traded securities is indicative of the health of the country's securities markets, and is the Indian equivalent of the Dow Jones index.

CMC took over the task of developing the software for computerised securities trading knowing full well that it would be an extremely complicated job. No software company in India had ever tried developing software for automated trading.

The BOLT system became operational in 1995. On March 14, 1995, 818 scrips were transferred to the screen-based trading system. It is one of the few stock trading system in the world that handles hybrid / mixed modes of trading; both order-driven and quote-driven. It supports the normal segment, the auction segment, the odd-lot segment and continuous net settlement. There are now more than 6000 BSE trading terminals spread across the country.

The main achievements of the BOLT system are:

	An average response time of less than two seconds
	On an average, 3.4 million market queries are handled daily
	The system can support more than 10,000 users

BOLT implementation and maintenance is one of the major successes of CMC. A group of about 50 engineers continue to work for the maintenance and enhancement of the BOLT system.