SEBI's AI platform SUDARSAN has flagged 20,000 fraudulent posts since November 2025. A separate survey found 62% of Indian investors rely on finfluencer recommendations, driving the regulator's push into automated surveillance.
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The Securities and Exchange Board of India is now finding fraud on social media with algorithms, not just auditors. Since Project SUDARSAN went live in November 2025, the system has flagged more than 20,000 instances of fraudulent posts and content, SEBI said in its Annual Report 2025-26.
The tool scans publicly available posts across platforms using multimodal AI. It processes spoken language, images, video, and text – including content written in regional Indian languages – and checks it against behavioral and regulatory rules to assign a risk score. The highest-scoring items generate structured alerts for review by the regulator.
SEBI Chairman Tuhin Kanta Pandey, in the report, tied the push directly to a finding from the agency's latest Investor Survey: 62% of investors say finfluencer recommendations influence at least some of their investment decisions. "Many of whom operate without accountability or verified performance data," Pandey said.
The survey also found that 93% of respondents considered financial creators moderately to highly credible. YouTube was the most-used platform for securities-market information (91% of respondents), followed by Instagram (64%) and Facebook (61%).
SEBI designed SUDARSAN (short for Surveillance of Unauthorized Digital Activity via Real-time Scanner for Anti-fraud) to catch claims of guaranteed returns, impersonation of regulated entities, fake certifications, and unregistered investment advice. The regulator said the system marks a shift from manual, reactive surveillance to automated real-time monitoring that can handle a much larger content volume than conventional oversight.
A separate AI system, R(AI)DAR, reviews advertisements issued by market participants and flags misleading or unauthorized promotional content.
Pandey said technology and data analytics "are now becoming core components" of the regulator's supervisory framework. "SEBI has responded to this shift by investing in technology and data analytics as core supervisory tools, ensuring that while the market scales, the safety net for the investor scales even faster," he said.
Alongside the AI tools, SEBI is using validated UPI handles, its SEBI Check portal, and verified app labels to help investors distinguish legitimate intermediaries from fraudulent operators.
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