How do I check if a stock advisor is SEBI registered?

Go to SEBI's official recognised intermediary list on sebi.gov.in and search by the advisor's name or their registration number (for example, an INH number for a Research Analyst or an INA number for an Investment Adviser). A valid, active record will show the registered name, trade name, and current status.

What is the difference between an INH and INA registration number?

INH is the prefix for a SEBI Research Analyst, who publishes research and specific trade recommendations. INA is the prefix for a SEBI Investment Adviser, who gives more holistic, personalised financial advice. Both are legitimate SEBI categories, but they cover different services.

What should I do if a SEBI registration number doesn't show up on the list?

Treat it as a strong warning sign and do not make any payment. A number that returns no match, or matches a different name than the person contacting you, suggests the registration claim is false. This is a case for the cybercrime reporting portal or a local police complaint, not a SCORES grievance.

What is SEBI SCORES and when should I use it?

SCORES is SEBI's official portal for filing complaints against registered market intermediaries, including Research Analysts and Investment Advisers. Use it for service or conduct disputes with an entity that is confirmed registered. It is not the right channel for reporting someone who is not registered at all.

Does a SEBI registration guarantee good returns?

No. SEBI registration confirms legal standing, accountability, and a formal complaints channel. It does not guarantee that any recommendation will be profitable. Markets carry risk regardless of who is registered, and no SEBI-registered entity is permitted to promise assured or guaranteed returns.

How to Check if a Stock Advisor Is SEBI Registered

Q: How much can a SEBI Research Analyst legally charge me?

Under SEBI's guidelines dated 8 January 2025, Research Analyst fees are capped at ₹1.51 lakh per family per annum for individual and HUF clients. A quote well above this for an individual client is worth questioning directly.

Somebody added you to a Telegram group last week. The admin posts three "calls" a day, each one screenshotted with a green candle and a rocket emoji. He wants ₹15,000 for the "premium" group, UPI only, his personal number. Before you send a single rupee, there is one thing you can check in under two minutes that tells you whether this person is legally allowed to give you stock advice at all.

That check is SEBI registration. Every person or firm in India that gives buy, sell, or hold recommendations for a fee is required to be registered with the Securities and Exchange Board of India, either as a Research Analyst (RA) or an Investment Adviser (IA). If they are not registered, what they are doing is illegal, full stop, regardless of how confident they sound on a voice note.

This piece walks through exactly how to look someone up on SEBI's own record, what each field on that record actually means, and what to do depending on what you find. We will use NiveshX's own registration as the worked example, not because it proves anything about returns, but because it is a real, live entry you can go verify yourself right now.

Why this two-minute check matters more than the pitch

Anyone can build a slick app, post a Nifty chart, and call themselves a "SEBI certified expert." There is no filter on who can say those words on Instagram. There is a filter on who can legally charge you for stock recommendations, and that filter is a registration number issued by SEBI after background checks, exams, and net worth requirements.

A registration number does three things for you as a retail trader. It tells you the person is accountable to a regulator, not just to their own conscience. It tells you there is a formal complaints channel if things go wrong. And it puts a cap on what they can legally charge you, which matters because a lot of scam operations are really just fee-extraction machines with a stock market costume on top.

It does not tell you the calls will make money. Keep that separate in your head. Registration is about legality and accountability, not about performance. We will come back to this distinction because it is the single most common thing people get wrong.

INH vs INA: know which one you are dealing with

SEBI registration numbers for market intermediaries follow a pattern, and for advisory-type entities you will mostly see two prefixes.

INH — Research Analyst (RA). This is the category for someone who publishes research and gives specific trade ideas: entry price, target, stop-loss. NiveshX operates under an RA registration.
INA — Investment Adviser (IA). This is the category for someone who gives holistic, personalised advice, often tied to your full financial situation and portfolio, usually under an advisory fee or retainer model.
Neither prefix on the message, the invoice, or the app means the person is not SEBI registered, no matter what else is printed on their letterhead.

The distinction matters because the two categories have different obligations. A Research Analyst is not supposed to manage your money or place trades for you. Neither is an Investment Adviser, for that matter. If anyone claiming either registration also wants your broker login, your UPI PIN, or asks you to transfer funds into "their" trading account, that alone should end the conversation, registered or not.

The actual walkthrough: looking someone up on SEBI's list

SEBI publishes a searchable list of recognised Research Analysts and Investment Advisers directly on its website. You do not need a login, an app, or anyone's permission to use it. Here is how to run the check.

Open SEBI's recognised intermediary list in your browser (link at the bottom of this article). Do this on sebi.gov.in directly, not through a link someone sent you in a chat.
Search by name or by registration number. If the advisor gave you a number like INH000014049, type it in directly, that is the fastest way to a single match. If you only have a person's name or a trade name, search by that instead.
Match the trade name and the individual's name against what was used to contact you. A mismatch here, even a small one, is worth pausing on.
Open the record and check the validity status. SEBI registrations carry a validity period, and the record will show whether it is currently active.
Note the registered address and contact details on file. These belong to the regulated entity, not necessarily to whoever is messaging you, but they should be traceable back to the same organisation.
Cross-check the fee being asked of you against SEBI's fee cap for Research Analysts, covered below.

What each field on the record actually means

Validity and status

This tells you whether the registration is currently active. Registrations can lapse, be suspended, or be cancelled following disciplinary action. An expired or inactive status means the person is not currently authorised to charge you for advice, even if the number itself once existed and once looked legitimate.

Registered name and trade name

SEBI records the legal name of the registered individual or entity, and separately the trade name (the brand they operate under, if different). Both should line up with what is on the app, website, or invoice you are looking at. A trade name that has changed recently, or one that does not appear anywhere near the registered name, deserves a second look.

Registered address and contact

This is the official address on file with the regulator. It will not always match a WhatsApp number or an Instagram bio, and that is normal, people run marketing from multiple channels. But it should be possible to connect the dots. If a firm's official address is a residential flat in a city that has no relationship to anything the advisor has told you, that is a data point, not proof of fraud, but worth remembering.

Red flags that mean stop and don't pay

Most retail investors do not lose money to advisors who are registered and simply give bad calls. Bad calls happen to registered and unregistered people alike; markets are uncertain. Most retail investors who get scammed lose money to setups that were never real advisory relationships in the first place. Watch for these specifically.

The registration number returns nothing on SEBI's list, or returns an error. A real, active number will show up. If it does not, stop there.
The name on the SEBI record does not match the brand or the person messaging you. Scammers sometimes borrow a real registration number from a public source and pair it with a completely different operation.
The status shows expired, suspended, or cancelled. Do not accept the explanation that "renewal is pending" as a reason to proceed anyway.
You are shown a screenshot of a registration certificate instead of being pointed to the live SEBI record. Screenshots can be edited. A live lookup on sebi.gov.in cannot be faked the same way.
The fee demanded is well above SEBI's cap for individual and HUF clients, or is structured as a one-time "lifetime access" payment to a personal UPI ID rather than a business account.
You are asked for your broker login credentials, your trading account password, or to route funds through the advisor rather than executing trades yourself on your own broker app.
The pitch leans on guaranteed returns, doubling your capital, or a specific win rate. No SEBI-registered entity is permitted to advertise assured or guaranteed returns publicly, so a hard promise is itself a compliance violation, not just a red flag.

The fee cap: a number worth memorising

SEBI's guidelines for Research Analysts, dated 8 January 2025, cap fees at ₹1.51 lakh per family per annum for individual and HUF clients. This is not a minor technicality. It exists specifically because unregistered operators were charging retail traders wildly inflated "premium membership" fees with no accountability behind them.

If someone claiming SEBI registration quotes you a package that blows past this cap for a family of individual clients, either the math does not add up or the registration claim does not hold. Ask directly how the fee structure complies with the January 2025 guidelines. A legitimate registered analyst will have a straightforward answer. An unregistered operator usually will not have thought about the question at all.

If the check fails: two very different paths

What you do next depends entirely on what kind of failure you found, and conflating the two wastes time and sometimes money.

The entity is registered, but you have a grievance

If the SEBI record matches, the registration is active, but you have a dispute, poor conduct, unresponsive support, or a billing issue, the correct channel is SEBI SCORES, the regulator's official complaints portal. This route exists precisely for disputes with registered intermediaries, and SEBI requires registered entities to respond to SCORES complaints within defined timelines.

The entity is not registered at all

If the number returns nothing, or the name does not match anything on SEBI's list, you are not dealing with a regulatory grievance. You are potentially dealing with fraud, and SCORES is not the right tool for that. File a complaint with the National Cybercrime Reporting Portal, or go to your local police station and file an FIR, especially if money has already changed hands. Keep every screenshot, every UPI transaction ID, and every chat log before you do anything else, including before you confront the person.

Registration is a floor, not a guarantee

It bears repeating because it is the part people skip past when they are relieved to find a valid number. A SEBI registration confirms legal standing and regulatory accountability. It does not confirm that any specific trade idea will work out. Markets move against well-researched calls constantly, and that is true for every registered analyst in the country, not a flaw specific to any one of them.

SEBI's own study from September 2024 found that 93% of individual F&O traders lost money between FY22 and FY24, with aggregate losses exceeding ₹1.8 lakh crore. That statistic is not about advisory quality. It reflects how difficult derivatives trading is structurally, for registered and unregistered participants alike. Verification protects you from outright fraud and unaccountable operators. It does not, and cannot, protect you from market risk. Position sizing, stop-losses, and not betting the rent money on a single trade still remain entirely your job.

A quick mental checklist before you pay anyone

Strip the whole process down and it comes to five questions you can run through in the time it takes to make chai.

Does the registration number exist on SEBI's official list, searched directly on sebi.gov.in?
Is the status currently active, not expired or suspended?
Does the name and trade name on the record match what is on the app, invoice, or profile?
Is the fee within the ₹1.51 lakh per family per annum cap for individual and HUF clients?
Is anyone asking for your broker login, trading account access, or funds transferred to a personal account, none of which a legitimate RA or IA needs?

If all five come back clean, you are dealing with a real, accountable, registered entity. What you do with their research from there, how much you trust it, how you size your positions, is still on you. That is not a caveat to soften the message. That is the whole point of doing your own verification instead of outsourcing your judgment to a Telegram admin's confidence.

Where NiveshX fits into this

NiveshX is the research and alerts app built on Ankit Rambabu Jaiswal's SEBI Research Analyst registration, INH000014049, trade name BullStockIndia. The app publishes trade recommendations with entry, target, and stop-loss, along with alerts and daily market sentiment. It does not hold client money and does not place trades on anyone's behalf; every trade is executed by the user on their own broker account.

None of that is a claim about outcomes, and this article is not one either. It is a description of the structure, the same structure you should be checking for with any advisor before you pay a fee, NiveshX included. Run the SEBI lookup yourself rather than taking our word, or anyone's word, for it.