What Is an Accredited Investor? SEBI Thresholds

An accredited investor in India is not a self-description. It is a certificate. SEBI built the framework so that an investor who can demonstrate a defined level of income or net worth is independently verified by an accreditation agency, and then gets access to products and relaxations that are closed to everyone else. This page sets out the thresholds as they currently stand, who is deemed accredited without applying, how long a certificate lasts, and what the status is actually worth.

What are the accredited investor thresholds?

The criteria sit in the definition itself, and they are alternatives rather than a stack. Meeting any one of the routes in your category is enough.

The partnership rule is the strict one. It is not a firm level test: every partner has to clear the bar on their own.

Who is deemed accredited without applying?

A proviso to the definition treats a defined list as accredited investors who may not be required to obtain a certificate at all: the Central Government and State Governments, developmental agencies set up under their aegis, funds set up by them, qualified institutional buyers as defined under the ICDR Regulations, Category I foreign portfolio investors, sovereign wealth funds, multilateral agencies, and any other entity SEBI specifies.

That list is worth reading against the FPI categories. A Category I FPI is deemed accredited; other foreign portfolio investors are not covered by the proviso.

Who grants accreditation, and how long does it last?

An accreditation agency is a subsidiary of a recognised stock exchange or a subsidiary of a depository, or any other entity SEBI recognises subject to specified conditions. SEBI simplified the process in December 2023, and three things changed at once.

• KYC is the input. Accreditation agencies that are also KYC Registration Agencies may use the KYC documents they already hold, and may access the databases of other KRAs, for accreditation.
• The assessment is narrow, and says so. Agencies grant accreditation solely on the applicant's KYC and financial information, and the certificate must carry a disclaimer that the assessment does not exempt market intermediaries and pooled investment vehicles from their own due diligence at onboarding.
• Validity got longer. Two years where the applicant met the criteria for the preceding one financial year, up from one year. Three years where it met them in each of the preceding two financial years, up from a maximum of two. A newly incorporated entity with no prior year financials that meets the net worth criteria on the application date gets two years.

What accreditation unlocks

The relaxations are written into the product regulations rather than into the accreditation framework, which is why they are easy to miss.

In an alternative investment fund:

• The 1 crore rupee minimum does not apply. Regulation 10(c) bars an AIF from accepting an investment of less than 1 crore rupees, with a 25 lakh rupee floor for employees and directors of the fund or manager, and a proviso that the clause does not apply to an accredited investor.
• You do not count against the investor cap. No scheme of an AIF may have more than one thousand investors, and accredited investors are excluded while computing that number.
• An Accredited Investors only fund is now a defined category. SEBI's Third Amendment Regulations, 2025 introduced the term, defined as an AIF or scheme in which every investor other than the manager, sponsor and their employees or directors is an accredited investor, with effect from 19 November 2025. It absorbed the older large value fund for accredited investors, which the definition now expressly includes.

In an angel fund, accreditation went from optional to compulsory. Following SEBI's Second Amendment Regulations, 2025, an angel fund shall raise funds only from accredited investors, an angel investor is defined as an accredited investor or key management personnel of the fund or its manager, and no minimum value of investment applies to an angel investor in an angel fund. Anyone still working from the older 25 lakh rupee angel investor floor is reading a repealed position.

A specialised investment fund also exempts accredited investors from its 10 lakh rupee per investor floor.

What accreditation is not

It is not a licence, and it is not a rating. The certificate says an agency checked KYC and financial information against a threshold on a date. It carries an explicit disclaimer that it does not relieve any intermediary of its own due diligence. And it says nothing about the products it opens the door to: an Accredited Investors only fund is a privately placed vehicle that does not publish its portfolio, unlike the quarterly shareholding pattern and monthly fund disclosures that make listed market ownership readable.

So an accredited investor is someone an agency has certified against an income or net worth test, for two or three years at a time, and the practical effect is that several floors and caps stop applying.

Flock reports the filings themselves, each one dated and linked to its source. What any disclosure means for your money is your call to make. Not investment advice.